Agreed about Jada. The writing on her show is so hackneyed. I feel like
I'm watching Dr. Welby MD or Medical Center, from the seventies
-Original Message-
From: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com [mailto:scifino...@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of ravenadal
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 7:37 AM
To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [scifinoir2] Re: TV Shows We Wish Would Swap Writing Staffs
Two times on the Dollhouse Torchwood swap. Off the scifinoir tip, I
would love to see what Jada Pinkett could do with the scripts Nurse Jackie
gets.
~rave!
--- In scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com, Tracey de Morsella tdli...@... wrote:
TV http://io9.com/5345549/tv-shows-we-wish-would-swap-writing-staffs
Shows We Wish Would Swap Writing Staffs
By Charlie Jane http://io9.com/people/charliejane/posts/ Anders, 5:07
http://io9.com/5345549/tv-shows-we-wish-would-swap-writing-staffs PM
We don't just love television for the special effects or crackerjack
acting,
but for the writing. That's where our heroes get their cool lines and
defining moments. And sometimes we wonder: what'd happen if our fave shows
swapped writing staffs?
That's right - it's just like wife swappers, except it's writer swappers!
So
put the keys to the writers' room in a bowl, and let's get swinging...
Lost and Supernatural
In some ways these shows are opposites, even though they have so much in
common - they both have long, pull-your-hair-out plots and complex
characters who stray to the dark side regularly.
But Supernatural keeps it lean and mean - you pretty much just have the
Winchester brothers, and one to four supporting castmembers at any given
time. And Supernatural's big mysteries are relatively few, and relatively
straightforward: What did the yellow-eyed demon want with baby Sam? What
does Ruby want with grown-up Sam? Why did the angels pull Dean out of
Hell?
And we get answers to those questions on a regular basis. What's complex
on
Supernatural is the tangled theology of the Angel/Demon war. And few
relationships on television are as barbed and complex as the troubled love
between the two brothers.
Lost, meanwhile, thrives on complexity - there are easily two dozen
characters you're supposed to be keeping track of at any given moment, and
oftentimes, they all seem to be equally important. The show's creators
have
already told viewers not to expect answers to all the show's mysteries -
You
have to piece things together on your own, or just accept that some things
are not knowable. Meanwhile, the show gives us characters whose family
relationships are mostly dismal (except Hurley's, oddly) and whose
relationships with each other are frequently defined somewhat
straightforwardly by rivalry, love triangles, or unrequited love.
So we'd love to see the writers change places for a bit - the Supernatural
writers could bring a bit of immediacy to Lost's slow-boiling storylines,
and also show us a bit more of how all these people stuck on an island
together have become each other's family, and have grown to love each
other
even as they piss each other off.
And the Lost writers could give us a world of spirits and monsters that's
foggier, and weirder, than Supernatural has ever quite given us. Imagine
Supernatural with more weird clues, and more of a sense that there's a
massive chess game going on in which the Winchester brothers are just
pawns.
It could be quite a ride.
Dollhouse and Torchwood
These two shows both unkinked our brains, in different ways, last month.
We
finally got to see Dollhouse's unaired season finale, in which some
brilliant new adaptations to the Dollhouse's business model end up
destroying civilizaton itself. And Torchwood served up the shocking,
twisted
Children Of Earth miniseries, in which we find out just how valuable our
children really are - and just how dark Captain Jack is prepared to get.
These shows both operate in murky waters, with heroes who have huge dark
sides and make difficult (and frequently wrong) choices. They're the dark
side of escapism, showing how becoming part of a secret world of amazing
tech and cool fantasies can be dreadful as well as wonderful. But
Dollhouse
is a good deal nastier than Torchwood, giving us a for-profit venture that
is bent on making people's dreams come true - but only at the expense of
its
employees' personhood. Torchwood, meanwhile, is about people who
actually
do try to save the world - but often as not, they make things worse.
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/io9/2009/08/dollhousetorchwood.jpg
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/8/2009/08/500x_dollhousetorchwood.jpg
So what would happen if Russell T. Davies and his gang started writing
Dollhouse, and Joss and friends moved to Cardiff?
Well, for starters, Dollhouse would get a lot sexier. The relationship
between Boyd and Whiskey/Claire Saunders would probably heat up quite a
bit.
(And the already-homoerotic
