WHAT TIME IS IT?...Coverage of Glenn on BreeFM

Glenn, live on BreeFM @11pm EST, Wednesday.

Jeromy is going to post a better quality audio version of his show that played earlier in the evening.

After 9/11 Glenn was thinking about the movie The Siege. He was also thinking it was like something out of a Tom Clancy novel. We did not know what was going on. Around 3pm EST the networks were trying to figure out how to program the rest of the day. CNN had Edward Zwick who was one of the producers of The Seige. They also had Tom Clancy. Apparently other people were thinking the same way that Glenn was thinking.

From wikipedia:

The Siege is a 1998 film about a fictional situation where terrorist cells have made several attacks on New York City. It was directed by Edward Zwick and stars Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Annette Bening, and Tony Shalhoub.

In one of Tom Clancy's books (Debt of Honor) Jack Ryan becomes president of the USA because 100 people ahead of him died in a plane attack. He knows how to make it just believable enough.

From Wikipedia:

He is barely confirmed for in Congress when a Japanese airline pilot deliberately crashes his 747 onto the Capitol during a joint session of Congress, killing most of the people inside, decapitating the U.S. government and elevating Ryan to the Presidency

Glenn wants to know what we think about the renaissance of television. Glenn attributes it to devices like Tivo. We have seen a return to serial story telling. Television since 2001 has been beating out movies. Glenn sometimes went to 2-3 movies a day in the past. By 2004 he was rarely going to the movies. In the last year he has seen a few more. TV is just way better because serialised story telling has allowed TV shows to become better than they once were.

Back when there were only 3 networks you could get a good audience for a story. If you missed an episode you would have to wait for a re-run or syndication. A lot of shows that tried to tell a larger serialised story got cancelled. In 1999 Tivo came out. Glenn reviewed it for the examiner and thought it was the most amazing thing ever. It was such a novelty. With online you can now find stuff. You have a chance to see stuff you might not have been able to see for 20 years.

In serial installments you are not limited to 2hrs like a movie. Because of DVD and Hulu shows are now getting enough of an audience to keep them going. Hopefully this means some shows will last longer.

Glenn had been curious about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and watched the entire series over 2-3 days. He then had to wait for the new season to start.

Part of the reason Glenn watches so many UK shows is that their seasons tend to only run 6-13 episodes. Because of that there is so much more variety: Skins, Peep Show etc. You are not making a huge time commitment.

In the 80s and 90s serialised stories tended to fail. We saw so much more episodic story telling. You could miss an episode and still catch up. Ninety-nine percent of the time everything is resolved in an episode.

Around 2000-2001 things changed: Supranos, Freaks and Geeks. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville walked the fine line because people said it was too much "monster of the week".

At one time DVD burners were very expensive. There were problems watching burned disks. Glenn used to have a pocket PC that could play mpeg. It had 512mb of storage. He might be able to fit 2 or 3 things on it. When people figured out the avi compression things got much better. Kevin Rose was doing a show called "Thebroken". Glenn found out about the warspy device from Kevin Rose.

Glenn originally thought he could come up with the money to do a season of a show and release it on bit torrent. Then they could produce a DVD to raise money for a 2nd season. The hard part was finding good people to work with in the bay area. Glenn did a footage test with Dominique and Mari. By the time he got back to working on it YouTube was up and running. In his RedEarth screen play he had the beginnings of the Opaphid/Tachyon story.

With online web we have mostly seen episodic series. There has been some serialised story telling but it is hard to maintain a level of viewers. For it to do better online you are going to have to see some more innovation. Because of Hulu people are becoming trained to watch longer videos for example. What is the format that is going to work best? It is an exciting time.

Dollhouse: what is interesting is that we all know there is a bigger mythology. The first episodes are more episodic and then it is supposed to get more interesting. Echo is not aware, but it is supposed to get good in the next episode. We do not currently have a real connection to the character.

Quantum Leap's first few episodes were not super strong. A few days ago Glenn went back and watched the early 21 Jump Street and watched the first 4 - 5 episodes of the first season. In episode 2 they are investigating a car theft ring which has found a loop hole in the system. It was a brilliant and interesting crime. It all just works. We do not know about the larger plot yet. It looked like a great example of episodic story telling. Glenn has not seen an episode of Dollhouse that he would put in that same category. You care about the characters. There is mystery and we go along with them. In Dollhouse there is no real mystery. The last episode felt like a twist for the sake of a twist. There was no rabbit hole to go down because Echo is not aware.

In another episode of Jump Street, girls were partying and ending up dead. It had 3 guys that would later be Oscar nominated. Seems strange for a show that was on Fox in the late 80s.

For a show that is episodic in the first 6 episodes the most interesting things have been in the larger story. The accidental mind wipe was interesting but they blew that one too soon. They have had twists in each episode. Even the 2nd episode was a big twist. The twists are what is wrong with Dollhouse right now. Glenn will keep watching however because he wants to like the show. However right now it does not match up to Jump Street.

Stephen J. Cannell and Patrick Hasburgh were the masters of episodic television. Joss Whedon you are awesome at telling a story but perhaps you are not the master of episodic TV. Joss, you are good at big tales but a twist does not make a beginning middle and end. The story arcs in Jump Street may not have been the greatest but we were entertained well week to week. That is what is missing in Dollhouse.

Last year Glenn was close to getting a deal off the ground within the RedEarth Universe and he was having fun thinking about ideas for situations you could put the characters in. They can make Echo anyone. She has been a ransom negotiator, a back up dancer, a member of a cult, a cat thief and an girl who gets hunted and a mid-wife. Yet, she could be anything. Glenn originally thought it might be more like Quantum Leap. You could get a glimpse of the next episode. In the comic book they would just jump into thing to end it.

We keep watching week to week and we want to see it get really good. With Dollhouse we love Joss Whedon and we want it to get better. Dollhouse had a fan base before it even aired. This is a situation unlike anything we have seen before.

On an other note, It is interesting how the 90210 actors have done great things since they moved on.

How great were LG15: The Last last week? It was really fun and Glenn wants to thank them. Glenn diggs it and encourages everyone to watch it.

Glenn is a fan of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia . He had to stop watching it for a while because there were some bad episodes in the 4th season. He watched episode 8 onwards the other day. Episode 9 was a very obscure pairing of characters. Rob Thomas and Sinbad? Why would they agree to do it? He went online and it really was them. It was obscure and wonderful and unexpected. It ended strong in the second half.

Glenn has always like this cover that he is going out on: Matchbox Twenty - Time After Time

Here is the archive of of stories from LG15 TODAY concerning Glenn's radio show on BreeFM.

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