Throughout the course of Dirty Dan's Salacious Saga of Interminable Illicitness, (I worked moderately hard to get that triple alliteration in there) I've been finding myself frequently thinking back to one of the few sitcoms I still enjoy. As is often the case for me, it's an animated sitcom, and happily there's no chance of ever confusing it with a kid's show based solely on its style, its sense of humor, and its cast. I mean, I might be wrong in that last part, but I can't recall ever seeing H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, or the late Jessica Walter in a kid's sitcom before.
It's Archer. I'm talking about Archer, and I very intentionally placed Jessica Walter's name last in that list because it was one of her frequent lines as title character Sterling Archer's overbearing and, frankly, more than a little psychotic mother, Malory, that keeps coming to mind:
"What fresh Hell is this?!"
If you've seen the show, then I'm sure you're already hearing in the voice and tone of the late actress' many readings of that line. It's a truly perfect encapsulation of the feeling one gets when reading about the increasing mismanagement and impropriety put on display by ol' Dirty Dan.
Honestly, I never watched Archer. I've been told by basically everyone I know I need to fix that, but at the same time, when I think of Jessica Walters, I think of Lucille Bluth, so... trust me, I hear her well enough. Truly one of the GOATs when it came to portraying horribly unlikeable old women. As the kids would say, we stan a queen.
JELLYFISH!! You've earned some pretty hardcore devotion from me for bringing them up, something I did not anticipate in today's installment at all. Criminally underrated is almost a criminal understatement. Gone too soon, but never gone from my heart.
I view it as one of my utmost responsibilities as a cultural critic, investigator, and commentator to use my platform, no matter how small, to spread the word of often-forgotten and overlooked bands from the past, and Jellyfish is and always has occupied the top of my list when it comes to bands of which I feel, "No, EVERYBODY has to know about them". Their second album is definitely in my top five favorite records of all time. And, frankly, it also brings a smile to my face to see someone else who also knows about how great they are. I'm truly happy to see another Jellyfish-respecter out here.
"Actually, those were fan-made memes, which are apparently still very popular to post on Twitter.
But hopefully I didn’t actually need to tell you that."
I'll be honest, I thought they might be genuine up to that hard swear, haha. Anyway, appreciate the continuation of the tale as always. Don't really have a whole lot to contribute, since this part is mostly about stuff I didn't watch and don't have any connection with. So I'll just end with a few random observations:
Surprising to hear there's such a big tone difference between iCarly and the other shows. Going in I assumed all those shows would feel like they were made on the same template.
I actually had no idea the whole Jonas thing started as a TV show. I thought it was a regular band that happened to strike it big for some reason. And even if it's been decades now, the idea of Disney making all these live-action shows is still kind of jarring to me. They'll always be the cartoon company to me first and foremost. Anyway, I guess it'd always be a long shot for someone like Nickelodeon to beat a megacorp like Disney at their own game.
Is it just me, or is that High School Musical poster kind of scary, in that dead-eyed, plastic people sort of way? They really do look like stock photo models, don't they? There's something a bit too unnervingly staged and unnaturally clear-cut about them, just like with stock photos. At least the Victorious cast look like actual human beings and not Autons.
"But I mean it when I say that Cat Valentine is actually, genuinely functionally retarded. She has the IQ of a shovel."
Ah, the good old "stupidity as brute force comedy" hack. Can't say that gives me a lot of confidence in the rest of the writing there. I guess you'll tell us next time, but I'm curious if she gets any smarter when she's promoted to main character in the other show.
The whole "actor to musician revolving door" aspect is also interesting here. And of course the related "how to graduate from child acting to a functional adult career/life". While they obviously have the performance aspect in common, acting and singing still seem like such distinct disciplines I'm a bit puzzled why so many people seem to go be drawn to both and go back and forth between them. Maybe I'm way off here, but even if it's not as intuitive, I think writing fiction has more similarities to acting in many ways. I suspect many of the mental processes are the same, it's just that you express the result with either words or your whole physical being, to put it that way. But both involve inhabiting fictional characters and worlds from the inside in a way singing or composing music doesn't.
The interesting thing about Schneider's show is that they all have a very similar feel in terms of production. Remember how I said he kept a very tight grasp on the production staff? It translates in a way that makes all of the shows look, sound, and just feel identical, but the writing and nuances of it are really what separates them. Production-wise, Victorious and iCarly look and sound very similar, but the content presented is wildly different. So, they definitely are made with a similar template, but each show had their own unique quirks and idiosyncrasies that made them feel like their own, if that makes sense.
Also, I should say that Jonas did not start out as a show, I didn't mean for it to come off that way - they were a band, first and foremost. Now, they were bankrolled by Disney and on their label for a good few years before their show ever materialized, so they were very much a Disney property, but the show was made to cash in on them, not to make a show about a boy band. They were a boy band that already existed that they made a show about, which is exactly the opposite of Big Time Rush. Which is probably why Jonas did better than Big Time Rush, in the end. They already had a huge following and the show only worked to continue growing their presence in pop culture.
As for High School Musical... yeah. I get it. It's very clean cut, very staged, very... sterile. I don't want to go on a screed about why HSM works as a movie, but that's part of it. It's so squeaky clean and harmless and devoid of any edges that, frankly, anyone can enjoy it, given their in the same headspace. I'm a bit ashamed to admit it but I went back and listened to the soundtrack while I was writing this out of curiosity and a lot of the music holds up. It's just a well-made Disney product that's as inoffensive as a movie can be. And, given the crap they're churning out now... I think that's a good thing. But it is, in a word, sterile. Personally - and, again, to my shame - I actually think the cast of Victorious was very entertaining. Watching the show again for research, I have to admit that it's really not bad for what it is. But I think a lot of the "edge", I guess you could say, is what makes it so entertaining. But I go more into that in the next article.
Not to spoil anything, but Cat never gets any smarter. Ever. Not even in her own show. It's all down hill for that character from here.
As for the writing and acting connection, I don't think you're wrong. One of the biggest faults I see in a lot of writers is a true inability to inhabit a character - I'm not trying to say I'm exempt from this, since I often struggle with making protagonists who aren't just me but in a different situation with various quirks and differences that don't fundamentally set us apart, but to write a great piece of fiction, you really are required to be able to take on a persona of someone you're not and, in most ways, in inherently different from who you are. One of my biggest pet peeves is that so many writers write dialogue where every character sounds exactly the same and none of them have their own unique ways of speaking with all sorts of proprietary quirks. That's something that can only really come from getting in a foreign headspace of someone who isn't you and, in a lot of ways, is like acting. Of course, it's hard to do when you're writing for characters who come from a world that's fundamentally different from our own, but, again... that kind of ties into what we were talking about when we were discussing how so many people have this idea that writing is "easy" and "anyone can do it", which just isn't true. I think music can definitely be similar depending on the content, but usually isn't. I'm not a musician, just a music dork, and I think to make a great piece of music that captures a certain emotion or feel or time or place or theme, it also requires that abstract thinking of placing yourself in an alien environment, through a different set of eyes. But that ties into a larger discussion about the dreadful dearth of creativity in the music scene that I was having with my friends earlier. Back in the 70's, there was all sorts of gonzo concept albums about sci-fi and fantasy and, really, you could make an album that was ostensibly about a wizard going on a journey through a fantasy world and invoke the feelings that come from such a setting... but that's totally absent from modern music. I'm not saying its inherently wrong, either, but it certainly is disappointing that music has been so sanitzed that the concept of telling a story through that medium is considered absurd by most people, especially when epic poetry and the myths of old were all rooted in music. Music is an extremely powerful form of story-telling, but its a facet of that particular medium that has been all but lost.
"So, they definitely are made with a similar template, but each show had their own unique quirks and idiosyncrasies that made them feel like their own, if that makes sense."
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. To once again show how much video games have warped my outlook, my immediate thought was that it's basically like different games made in the same engine. Or to use a (maybe slightly) more high-class metaphor, since I know you read JMG: like how trad Golden Dawn, his Celtic version and the new Heathen one are all built on the base GD magical "technology", but use very different symbolism and religious content.
"Not to spoil anything, but Cat never gets any smarter. Ever. Not even in her own show. It's all down hill for that character from here."
Considering how it sounds like she was already at the bottom of the sub-sub-basement at the end of Victorious. I'm morbidly curious how far down that hill goes...
"That's something that can only really come from getting in a foreign headspace of someone who isn't you and, in a lot of ways, is like acting."
This is also one of the reasons I find writing fiction easier than essays. With the latter I always end up coming across as so stiff and formal, since I'm writing as "myself". When I slip into a fictional narrator it's more like playing a role, which is good for losing those inhibitions and writing more naturally.
Your music comments are also really interesting, and I like the idea of music as storytelling. And also the thoughts about using music to tell different stories. Feels like 99.9% of all popular music (in the dictionary sense, not just the "pop" genre) seems to be about romantic love, which is fair enough as a theme, but one that also crowds out a lot of other options. Especially since it seems most of the exceptions are about drugs and gang culture.
The part about composition also requiring that alien headspace makes a lot of sense now you mention it. I'll admit I've never been a big music person, and the whole concept of composing music seems so foreign to me. As in, I struggle to imagine what that mental process would even look like. I don't think there's anything neurologically wrong with my music sense, since I can process and enjoy music, but I have absolutely no idea how it's "built" or how that process works other than a few vague bits I've picked up here and there. So I appreciate getting that glimpse.
As for lack of creativity in music...yep. In the end I guess we're back to the good old "stuck culture" idea, as you like to call it, or what JMG might call "the failure of imagination" or something. A few fossilized forms lurching on, zombie-like, and everything reduced to the absolute lowest common denominator.
Throughout the course of Dirty Dan's Salacious Saga of Interminable Illicitness, (I worked moderately hard to get that triple alliteration in there) I've been finding myself frequently thinking back to one of the few sitcoms I still enjoy. As is often the case for me, it's an animated sitcom, and happily there's no chance of ever confusing it with a kid's show based solely on its style, its sense of humor, and its cast. I mean, I might be wrong in that last part, but I can't recall ever seeing H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, or the late Jessica Walter in a kid's sitcom before.
It's Archer. I'm talking about Archer, and I very intentionally placed Jessica Walter's name last in that list because it was one of her frequent lines as title character Sterling Archer's overbearing and, frankly, more than a little psychotic mother, Malory, that keeps coming to mind:
"What fresh Hell is this?!"
If you've seen the show, then I'm sure you're already hearing in the voice and tone of the late actress' many readings of that line. It's a truly perfect encapsulation of the feeling one gets when reading about the increasing mismanagement and impropriety put on display by ol' Dirty Dan.
Honestly, I never watched Archer. I've been told by basically everyone I know I need to fix that, but at the same time, when I think of Jessica Walters, I think of Lucille Bluth, so... trust me, I hear her well enough. Truly one of the GOATs when it came to portraying horribly unlikeable old women. As the kids would say, we stan a queen.
Malory is a lot like Lucille if she were a spy. Very similar sort of energy to that performance.
JELLYFISH!! You've earned some pretty hardcore devotion from me for bringing them up, something I did not anticipate in today's installment at all. Criminally underrated is almost a criminal understatement. Gone too soon, but never gone from my heart.
I view it as one of my utmost responsibilities as a cultural critic, investigator, and commentator to use my platform, no matter how small, to spread the word of often-forgotten and overlooked bands from the past, and Jellyfish is and always has occupied the top of my list when it comes to bands of which I feel, "No, EVERYBODY has to know about them". Their second album is definitely in my top five favorite records of all time. And, frankly, it also brings a smile to my face to see someone else who also knows about how great they are. I'm truly happy to see another Jellyfish-respecter out here.
"Actually, those were fan-made memes, which are apparently still very popular to post on Twitter.
But hopefully I didn’t actually need to tell you that."
I'll be honest, I thought they might be genuine up to that hard swear, haha. Anyway, appreciate the continuation of the tale as always. Don't really have a whole lot to contribute, since this part is mostly about stuff I didn't watch and don't have any connection with. So I'll just end with a few random observations:
Surprising to hear there's such a big tone difference between iCarly and the other shows. Going in I assumed all those shows would feel like they were made on the same template.
I actually had no idea the whole Jonas thing started as a TV show. I thought it was a regular band that happened to strike it big for some reason. And even if it's been decades now, the idea of Disney making all these live-action shows is still kind of jarring to me. They'll always be the cartoon company to me first and foremost. Anyway, I guess it'd always be a long shot for someone like Nickelodeon to beat a megacorp like Disney at their own game.
Is it just me, or is that High School Musical poster kind of scary, in that dead-eyed, plastic people sort of way? They really do look like stock photo models, don't they? There's something a bit too unnervingly staged and unnaturally clear-cut about them, just like with stock photos. At least the Victorious cast look like actual human beings and not Autons.
"But I mean it when I say that Cat Valentine is actually, genuinely functionally retarded. She has the IQ of a shovel."
Ah, the good old "stupidity as brute force comedy" hack. Can't say that gives me a lot of confidence in the rest of the writing there. I guess you'll tell us next time, but I'm curious if she gets any smarter when she's promoted to main character in the other show.
The whole "actor to musician revolving door" aspect is also interesting here. And of course the related "how to graduate from child acting to a functional adult career/life". While they obviously have the performance aspect in common, acting and singing still seem like such distinct disciplines I'm a bit puzzled why so many people seem to go be drawn to both and go back and forth between them. Maybe I'm way off here, but even if it's not as intuitive, I think writing fiction has more similarities to acting in many ways. I suspect many of the mental processes are the same, it's just that you express the result with either words or your whole physical being, to put it that way. But both involve inhabiting fictional characters and worlds from the inside in a way singing or composing music doesn't.
The interesting thing about Schneider's show is that they all have a very similar feel in terms of production. Remember how I said he kept a very tight grasp on the production staff? It translates in a way that makes all of the shows look, sound, and just feel identical, but the writing and nuances of it are really what separates them. Production-wise, Victorious and iCarly look and sound very similar, but the content presented is wildly different. So, they definitely are made with a similar template, but each show had their own unique quirks and idiosyncrasies that made them feel like their own, if that makes sense.
Also, I should say that Jonas did not start out as a show, I didn't mean for it to come off that way - they were a band, first and foremost. Now, they were bankrolled by Disney and on their label for a good few years before their show ever materialized, so they were very much a Disney property, but the show was made to cash in on them, not to make a show about a boy band. They were a boy band that already existed that they made a show about, which is exactly the opposite of Big Time Rush. Which is probably why Jonas did better than Big Time Rush, in the end. They already had a huge following and the show only worked to continue growing their presence in pop culture.
As for High School Musical... yeah. I get it. It's very clean cut, very staged, very... sterile. I don't want to go on a screed about why HSM works as a movie, but that's part of it. It's so squeaky clean and harmless and devoid of any edges that, frankly, anyone can enjoy it, given their in the same headspace. I'm a bit ashamed to admit it but I went back and listened to the soundtrack while I was writing this out of curiosity and a lot of the music holds up. It's just a well-made Disney product that's as inoffensive as a movie can be. And, given the crap they're churning out now... I think that's a good thing. But it is, in a word, sterile. Personally - and, again, to my shame - I actually think the cast of Victorious was very entertaining. Watching the show again for research, I have to admit that it's really not bad for what it is. But I think a lot of the "edge", I guess you could say, is what makes it so entertaining. But I go more into that in the next article.
Not to spoil anything, but Cat never gets any smarter. Ever. Not even in her own show. It's all down hill for that character from here.
As for the writing and acting connection, I don't think you're wrong. One of the biggest faults I see in a lot of writers is a true inability to inhabit a character - I'm not trying to say I'm exempt from this, since I often struggle with making protagonists who aren't just me but in a different situation with various quirks and differences that don't fundamentally set us apart, but to write a great piece of fiction, you really are required to be able to take on a persona of someone you're not and, in most ways, in inherently different from who you are. One of my biggest pet peeves is that so many writers write dialogue where every character sounds exactly the same and none of them have their own unique ways of speaking with all sorts of proprietary quirks. That's something that can only really come from getting in a foreign headspace of someone who isn't you and, in a lot of ways, is like acting. Of course, it's hard to do when you're writing for characters who come from a world that's fundamentally different from our own, but, again... that kind of ties into what we were talking about when we were discussing how so many people have this idea that writing is "easy" and "anyone can do it", which just isn't true. I think music can definitely be similar depending on the content, but usually isn't. I'm not a musician, just a music dork, and I think to make a great piece of music that captures a certain emotion or feel or time or place or theme, it also requires that abstract thinking of placing yourself in an alien environment, through a different set of eyes. But that ties into a larger discussion about the dreadful dearth of creativity in the music scene that I was having with my friends earlier. Back in the 70's, there was all sorts of gonzo concept albums about sci-fi and fantasy and, really, you could make an album that was ostensibly about a wizard going on a journey through a fantasy world and invoke the feelings that come from such a setting... but that's totally absent from modern music. I'm not saying its inherently wrong, either, but it certainly is disappointing that music has been so sanitzed that the concept of telling a story through that medium is considered absurd by most people, especially when epic poetry and the myths of old were all rooted in music. Music is an extremely powerful form of story-telling, but its a facet of that particular medium that has been all but lost.
"So, they definitely are made with a similar template, but each show had their own unique quirks and idiosyncrasies that made them feel like their own, if that makes sense."
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. To once again show how much video games have warped my outlook, my immediate thought was that it's basically like different games made in the same engine. Or to use a (maybe slightly) more high-class metaphor, since I know you read JMG: like how trad Golden Dawn, his Celtic version and the new Heathen one are all built on the base GD magical "technology", but use very different symbolism and religious content.
"Not to spoil anything, but Cat never gets any smarter. Ever. Not even in her own show. It's all down hill for that character from here."
Considering how it sounds like she was already at the bottom of the sub-sub-basement at the end of Victorious. I'm morbidly curious how far down that hill goes...
"That's something that can only really come from getting in a foreign headspace of someone who isn't you and, in a lot of ways, is like acting."
This is also one of the reasons I find writing fiction easier than essays. With the latter I always end up coming across as so stiff and formal, since I'm writing as "myself". When I slip into a fictional narrator it's more like playing a role, which is good for losing those inhibitions and writing more naturally.
Your music comments are also really interesting, and I like the idea of music as storytelling. And also the thoughts about using music to tell different stories. Feels like 99.9% of all popular music (in the dictionary sense, not just the "pop" genre) seems to be about romantic love, which is fair enough as a theme, but one that also crowds out a lot of other options. Especially since it seems most of the exceptions are about drugs and gang culture.
The part about composition also requiring that alien headspace makes a lot of sense now you mention it. I'll admit I've never been a big music person, and the whole concept of composing music seems so foreign to me. As in, I struggle to imagine what that mental process would even look like. I don't think there's anything neurologically wrong with my music sense, since I can process and enjoy music, but I have absolutely no idea how it's "built" or how that process works other than a few vague bits I've picked up here and there. So I appreciate getting that glimpse.
As for lack of creativity in music...yep. In the end I guess we're back to the good old "stuck culture" idea, as you like to call it, or what JMG might call "the failure of imagination" or something. A few fossilized forms lurching on, zombie-like, and everything reduced to the absolute lowest common denominator.
I eagerly await every new installment of this saga.
You just made me soooooooooo glad I got rid of that satellite dish YEARS ago!
Another intriguing article. Looking forward to the next one.
Interesting, humerous, and informative as always. I never knew I had such a need to learn about kids sitcoms. I’m looking forward to the next one.