#but it is the job of the showrunner to maintain consistency across the season

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

Some say Twelve and Clara's characters are inconsistent because they change with each season despite those changes being brought about by the adventures they experience, the different circumstances in their lives, and how we see new sides to Clara following after the Doctor turns into a very different person from the one she knew. Eleven and Twelve were very different and so Clara's reactions and interactions with them were different as well. This doesn't make her inconsistent, it is just how people are, we act differently in new situations and with new people.

[houseofglass]

Supernatural: the cheesy season

Okay, we’re halfway through the last season of Supernatural and I feel like it’s time for me to weigh in on it. There’ve been a lot of posts about how disappointed people are, or how they feel like the returning characters are a waste of time, and how awful the story line seems to be.

Whelp. Buckle up, I’ma gonna give you my lovely opinion. Some stuff I like, some I don’t, and some I’m really neutral about.

First: returning characters. I don’t mind this at all. I like seeing how some have evolved (looking at you, Becky) and how some were in the early seasons and are now playing a similar part this season. The return of Garth was nice. I don’t catch all the returners, but some of you do and point them out. If I could remember who you are, I’d give you a shout out to reminding us which episode/season the actor appeared on first, but I don’t, sorry. I think Supernatural should include as many returning bit-part actors as possible, just because it’s cool to watch.

As for regular characters, I loved Alexander Calvert’s portrayal of Belphegor and was mucho saddo to see him dead. I wanted more of his sass. Lots more. Sigh, I miss Crowley.

Second: set design. I’ve noticed the return of some things, like the motel room divider, and I love that! More please. Bring back sets that aren’t the bunker or Baby, bring back cluttered living rooms like Bobby’s, bring back a seedy motel, bring back a rough bar. The show has evolved to look very soap-opera-y: clean lines, organized set, everything in its place. This isn’t a bad thing, shows evolve and change, but it’s a nice callback to see a set that resembles the early seasons when things were messier, grittier, and more working-class.

Third: the plot. I mean....Chuck as the Big Bad, I can accept that. Sure. But, he’s, like, God. Normally, in a game or movie if someone has god-mode that means they’re basically indestructible. I don’t know how our boys are going to resolve this or bring it to a satisfying conclusion and still maintain that Chuck is all-powerful. When the finale of season 14 presented Chuck as the One To Vanquish I immediately decided how I was going to watch this last season. More on that later.

Fourth: Jensen and Jared’s performances. Jared has done an excellent job in keeping Sam consistent. Truly excellent. I don’t particularly love Jared as a person (anyone who plays pranks on people loses points with me, extra points if it’s sexual-based pranks on the job) but he’s a good actor and has done a good job on his, well, job.

Jensen’s acting....is lacking. He’s not as good lately. Actually, he hasn’t been for the past couple of seasons. I’ve wondered if he was ready to move on around season ten and started the wheels moving then. Wheels like getting his beer company off the ground and firmly established so he can have some passive income when the show ends. He’s a bit OTT, notably with the silent communication with Sam when Rowena wanted a drink in episode, uh, I don’t remember. The one with the cheap pink dress she wore. Also with his crying over Cas recently. I get it, he’s sad, but Dean doesn’t break down like that. Only once that I can recall, and he had to set himself up for it (driving to a secluded location alone, finally letting go). I feel like Jensen has lost the core of Dean somewhere, and it’s magnified by how well Jared is performing.

Fifth: Jensen’s audition reel. 15x04 was promoted heavily as directed by Jensen. I expect this and have little/no problem with it. He’s directed before and seems to enjoy it, and it’s the last season, so of course it would be promoted. I don’t have any opinion on his directing style as I don’t know what a good or bad director looks like. But the heavy promotion along with the heavy media presence is getting tiring. I understand, he’s about to be out of work and needs to go job hunting, but it’s wearing thin on me. Like the tap dancing. I watched the episode and thought he wasn’t particularly good at it. DJ Qualls was better, and I thought DJQ had more training and was surprised to learn he didn’t. When I found out they only had two hours’ rehearsal I thought, “yeah, it shows” because it missed the mark. Good attempt though. Nice to highlight Jensen can learn on the fly. I expect to see more of Jensen’s abilities as the episodes wind down. Actually, honestly, it feels desperate to me, but I’m not an actor and I don’t know if other actors do the same thing.

Sixth: showrunning. This entire season could have wrapped up by now. The plot is thin (fight God and win!) and not a lot of information is given in each episode. Instead the episodes wander around and highlight Jensen’s audition reel. The best wrap-up so far is finding out Rowena is the King of Hell. I freaking love that! It wraps up her character arc nicely.

Seventh: oh the cheese. This season is cheesy. Holy moly such cheese. Monsters in hot summer daylight? Oh my. VampChesters? Goodness me. Even that episode where Lilith returns as the girl who falls on the antlers. Man, that poked fun at the boys in a way I enjoyed, but it was still cheesy. Is this new fromage because Chuck is an unreliable narrator? Is this some meta accounting presented as fine Brie? Only time will tell.

Final thoughts: I mentioned above that the season 14 finale helped me choose a pair of glasses to use while viewing the show. Now, I’ve seen many finales in my day. Some I’ve loved and some I’ve hated and some I’ve been left disappointed. So now I understand something this social media generation seems to lack: I have no control over how my favourite character/show will end. No amount of whining, complaining, justifying, yelling, shouting, or cajoling will get the writers/showrunners/actors to do my bidding. Fandom has become toxic in this regard. FFS people, the only reason to contact those people on SM is to say thank you. Nothing more. You have no control or input. Nor do I.

So I sat in front of my TV with my cheesy goggles on and decided, “Fuck it. Fuck it all. I’m gonna taste the cheese this season.” And I have. Although I have complained, like, see above, I’ve also let go of any expectation of the show. It’s too long in the tooth at this point, with too many side characters and too much soap opera makeup (seriously, Dean was lit like a soap opera mistress in a few episodes. Like, wtf?) to take seriously.

So I invite you to enjoy some cheese with me. There are ten episodes left. Just ten. Ten more times to watch my favourite character, Baby, drive across the screen. Ten more times to have a new opportunity to write a coda or fix-it fic. Ten more times to imagine an OTP in a new scenario provided by the writers.

Have a slice of cheese with me. Watch the show with lightheartedness. Wish these actors adieu and expect nothing. We have no control over the ending, and no matter how much it hurts, we will have to say goodbye to Sam and Dean’s adventures at some point. Might as well do it with a smile.

[disneytva]

Disney Television Studios Makes Splashy Debut at Walt Disney Television Upfront 

Upfronts week always revolves around big reveals and highly anticipated first looks. This year, one of the most talked-about contenders to emerge was not a show but a studio.

The newly minted Disney Television Studios made a splashy debut as three of the industry’s large production entities – 20th Century Fox Television, ABC Studios and Fox 21 Television Studios – have come together under one roof following Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox.

The mantra on the Century City and Burbank lots is collaboration and cross-pollination of talent. The three companies will continue to be run with autonomy as distinct labels under the Disney Television Studios umbrella. But there is a clear expectation that the labels will share resources and information as warranted to support the larger cause of feeding successful shows to Disney’s suite of platforms.

Executives at the DTS studios have spent the past few weeks on a whirlwind get-to-know-your-colleagues tour. There have been meetings and presentations galore – perhaps a few too many all at once, some have noted.

But the goal has been for the studio executives to get to know one another and for the company’s production engines to be aware of the programming needs of the various networks and platforms from Disney Plus to FX to Freeform to Nat Geo, from ABC News to ESPN to Disney Channel. Face time is important in part because 20th TV and Fox 21, still housed on the Fox lot, remain physically separate from ABC Studios’ outpost on Disney’s Burbank lot.

On May 14, the announcement that Disney has taken full operational control of Hulu added more wind to DTS’ sails as it clears the path for Disney to manage the growing streaming platform as it sees fit. The closer association with Hulu will greatly benefit FX Networks, which isn’t part of the Disney Plus family friendly streaming platform, as well as the studios geared toward producing adult-focused primetime fare.

Among the high-profile new offerings from DTS are NBC’s Bradley Whitford comedy “Perfect Harmony,” from 20th TV, and ABC’s Cobie Smulders drama “Stumptown,” from ABC Studios.

On May 13, as Team Disney assembled in New York for upfronts, a group of about 30 senior studio executives assembled at Benno restaurant in Chelsea for a mixer that left attendees energized. Dana Walden, chairman of Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment, reinforced the collaboration message to the crowd and detailed how she courted Warner Bros. alum Craig Hunegs for months to take the leadership role as DTS president.

Leadership of the three labels has remained intact, with Jonathan Davis and Howard Kurtzman running 20th TV as presidents, Patrick Moran heading ABC Studios as president and Bert Salke at the helm of Fox 21 as president. The fact that the studio leaders and many other executives know each other well from professional and social circles has also helped the integration process. Moran spent seven years as a development executive at 20th Century Fox TV before joining ABC Studios in 2010 – which gives him an invaluable level of familiarity with his counterparts.

“You can’t look at the combination of these two companies and not feel a lot of excitement about a great future ahead,” said Kurtzman.

In planning for the integration of Disney and 21st Century Fox, Walden and her boss, Disney Television chairman Peter Rice, determined that the creative process would be best served by maintaining multiple labels rather than creating one overarching studio. “The messaging has been consistent,” Moran said. “They felt it was better to have three labels to service all of the (production needs) rather than to try to do it all under one platform.”

An early example of the all-for-one attitude was the move of former “Star” showrunner Karin Gist, who has an overall deal with 20th Century Fox TV, to become co-showrunner with Kenya Barris of ABC’s upcoming comedy “Mixed-ish,” which hails from ABC Studios. The deal came together quickly at Barris’ instigation.

“A win is a win is a win for everybody,” said Davis. “When Patrick called us, we said ‘We love Karen. We love Kenya. This would be great.’ We want everyone involved with ‘Mixed-ish’ to succeed. It’s imperative that we all work together to get the right creatives to the right shows at the right place.”

Moran credited Hunegs with setting a tone from the start that a sincere spirit of esprit de corps was essential to fulfilling the expansive vision outlined by Disney chairman-CEO Bob Iger in bringing together the formidable collection of TV-related assets through the Fox transaction.

“Craig’s done a good job of making sure we’re all connected,” Moran said. “If it feels like a win for one of us it should be a win for everybody. The realignment of the studios has not been tricky. We’re all still pursuing our own projects with our own creative partners because we all bring our own histories with our producers. But if you look at the total roster of talent it’s a pretty impressive list across the three studios.”

Salke noted that after the 18-month period of waiting for the Disney-Fox deal to close, there is renewed energy in the hallways, in part because the studios are seeing the promised additional resources to make deals, chase IP and court talent.

“This is an incredible universe that Disney has put together,” Salke said. “When you see it all put together, it makes incredible sense. Hulu was the final piece.”

The studio leaders say they are all under pressure to increase their output to feed Disney’s voracious appetite for content for Disney Plus, ABC, Freeform, FX and other outlets. At same time, the three banners all intend to continue fielding shows to non-Disney networks and platforms. Both 20th TV and ABC Studios have long balanced a directive to supply hits to internal networks with the desire to maintain a diverse portfolio of business all over town.

The marching orders are daunting, but the growth initiative has been backed by bigger budgets for the three banners.

“We have been handed a very large early Christmas present in terms of financial support to be able to build something pretty great,” Salke said.

Outside of Disney’s enlarged walls, there is concern among rival networks and studios about the market heft that Disney Television Studios will command. There’s also curiosity about whether Disney will be a big enough buyer and employer of creative talent to counter the inflationary effects of the eye-popping talent deals handed out in recent years by Netflix, Amazon and the nascent Apple streaming effort.

The trio of banners in Disney Television Studios closed out upfront week with 14 new broadcast series orders and 24 returning series. All told, DTS at present produces 69 series across 16 broadcast, cable and digital platforms. But even more important than a strong tally of new shows this year was demonstrating how the company aims to make DTS more than the sum of its parts.

“This was our first development season as a collective and our results already demonstrate the scope and power of our studios,” said Hunegs. “We are committed to making Disney Television Studios the best home for creative talent in our industry, and we’re enormously encouraged by these early returns.”

[aion-rsa]

NOS4A2 Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Cripple Creek

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This NOS4A2 review contains spoilers.

NOS4A2 Season 2 Episode 7

In our recent interview with NOS4A2 showrunner Jami O’Brien, she addresses something very surprising. There are people online who have bought into the lies of Charlie Manx. He claims he’s saving children from bad situations, and there are people who say, “Yes, that sounds right,” and look no further than that. Hopefully, his actions in the second season are enough to put fire to those particular lies, but that doesn’t mean Manx isn’t still a character with more dimensions than first suspected. Oh no, while up on “Cripple Creek,” Bing learns all about the roots of Charlie Manx’s psychosis and just how he became the undead, life-stealing presence who rides around in a Rolls-Royce kidnapping children.

As it turns out, leading children to a dark fate is something of a long-standing Charlie Manx tradition.

“Cripple Creek” is cut pretty neatly into two parts. The main segment concerns Charlie and Bing in the real world, with Bing finally losing his naive faith in Charlie Manx. After all, Bing waited for Manx for 10 years, working patiently to track down and get back the Wraith, and to bring back Charlie from the dead. He knows Charlie’s strengths and weaknesses, his patterns, his routines, his so-called hidey-holes, and pretty much all of his dirty secrets. At least, the ones that exist outside of Christmasland. He’s done nothing but what he’s asked to do, and he’s gone above and beyond all of Charlie’s previous employees, if only because he’s a true believer in a cause that, for Charlie, never existed in any real sense.

The other portion of the episode concerns that backstory alluded to in the introduction. Between the gingerbread gas of Bing and the way Millie sneaks into the old Manx house where Charlie secrets away all of his deepest fears, a whole lot about Manx’s childhood is revealed in a short amount of time, both through the words of the man himself—one of the side-effects of the gas is that it causes people to be more honest with their words—and through what terrifies him more than anything else in the world.

Between the two elements, Charlie’s deepest fears and the origin of his desire to “save” wayward children from broken homes, the character is explained quite a bit. His obsessions, his perseverance, and the twisted darkness that comes from Christmasland and infects every child that walks within its gates. Christmasland, as established, is a place that exists solely within Charlie Manx’s head, so it’s only natural that the things he loves, and the things he fears, would live alongside one another within his mind palace. Those things, and the experiences he had in the past, go a long way towards establishing just what kind of person he truly is. Someone can fake their attitude and personality all day long, but you can’t fake formative experiences.

Read more

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NOS4A2 Season 2 Episode 6 Review: The Hourglass

By Ron Hogan

As it turns out, Charlie (played as a youngster by Aidan Pierce Brennan) comes by his dislike of women from an early age, and his manipulative tendencies come from an early age, too. Charlie has a leadership quality, and the owner of the general store, Mr. Tim (Gary Wilmes), sees him as an easy mark, able to influence the young boys in town to come by the store to perform, ahem, special tasks for him. The promise of leaving town, of leaving his mother’s crowded, stinking whorehouse behind, is enough to turn Charlie’s eyes away from Tim’s rumored behavior and guides Charlie to lead friends directly into the hands of a child predator. Fittingly, Tim knows just what to say to get Charlie on his side, and is smart enough to avoid making any movies on Charlie until he’s already run through most of the boys in town (and Charlie is smart enough keep Tim

Even from an early age, Charlie was manipulative, and adult Charlie (Zachary Quinto) is just as good as manipulating Wayne (Jason David) and Bing (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson) into making choices that run counter to their own best interests. He’s able to use his own back story to twist and turn back around on Bing, and A. Rey Pamatmat’s script does a solid job of walking that line between humanizing Charlie as a potential victim of abuse who comes from a very broken home and showing Charlie as the manipulative monster he would become as a method of escaping his childhood, and as an adult luring children into his Wraith to maintain his immortality. In a sense, Charlie learned from someone truly gifted in the art of luring children, and he puts every one of those tricks he learned into practice on, essentially, everyone he comes into contact with.

That tone is found, in great measure, courtesy of the performers in the hands of director Tricia Brock. Certainly, the episode contains some very good moments visually, but it’s the performances, particularly that of Aidan Pierce Brennan, and the way he reflects aspects of what we already know about the Charlie character established by Zachary Quinto. There’s a consistency to the manner in which he speaks, the gestures he uses, and the methods undertaken to get people to look past their better judgment that rings true for both versions of the character, across a hundred or more years of timespan, whether he’s talking Oscar (Giuseppe Virzi) into going to the general store to be molested or getting Wayne to let him free from the back of the Wraith as Bing tries to crush both of them to death to end their reign of monster terror.

One of the powers of the Wraith seems to be that the kids in the back seat never remember anything good about their parents. All of those positive, happy memories are stripped away during the trip to Christmasland, leaving behind only grievances, anger, resentment, frustration… the very sorts of emotions that young Charlie Manx expresses when talking to the other children, and the sorts of emotions that he manipulates in Bing Partridge towards the parents of the children they steal. Wayne is told, urged, to remember the good things about his mother, and yet that seems to get harder and harder with every minute spent in the company of Charlie Manx.

Such is the nature of memory. The good times are harder to remember than the bad times, and require more effort to cling to, even when you’re not the victim of a soul-leeching psychic monster. However, the good memories might be the only thing that can save Wayne from the terrors of Christmasland and the machinations of the life-long child predator, Charlie Manx.

The post NOS4A2 Season 2 Episode 7 Review: Cripple Creek appeared first on Den of Geek.

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