My "procedural" is really a character drama disguised as a procedural.

For me (and I've felt it strongest in "Out of Gas", I think), the science-fiction-fantasy setup was mostly a way to put people in situations. That reads dumb, doesn't it? Oy. I mean that a very-far-away fictional way of seeing things may be the easiest set for a story, a people's story, and that it may be interpreted in such a different vast number of ways, to each their own, that it speaks this way more than one language.

So "Out of Gas" showed a speceship losing its heat and its air, made the danger to the world the characters had built the most immediate and urgent one possible, but every person who watched it could interpret it according to their daily hardships and dealings and dangers, be it losing a job, a set of beliefs, family members, whatever. Until Tim pointed it out, I didn't even realize it could apply to the whole political situation of Israel. So, for me, the setup is just the definition of the playground, and the real important core of things is what game is played. I love science fiction/fantasy, don't get me wrong. But what I love most is the people. A story just about the technical problem a speceship encounters, or the special powers a human being needs in order to fight vampires is much less interesting to me, than the people involved in those situations, their stories, and the way these stories resonate in my life and thoughts.

And I look the same way at what Tim just called a procedural. I like a "who did it" sort-of-riddle and solving a mystery quite a bit, but to me, the most interesting story is about the people who solve these riddles.

the currency I trade in is moral ambiguity, irony, pain, death, hopefully driving the viewer toward a familiar corner, then banking off a cliff.

Which is why I'm really looking forward for the show (and, well, being able to watch it, but let's not make this post another of my whiney ones, OK?). For me, dealing with crimes of a very dark nature, trying to figure out how these criminals work, to get into their heads, to be forced to do things you may have not done in your everyday life, and finding out who you are and what are your values in the process, is just a way to take something that people do every single day, take it to the most extreme possible end, and shed light on it through that. Thankfully, I don't have to deal with straight-up moral questions, life-and-death ones, how-far-you'd-go ones on my daily life. But I'm interested in those questions, and taking things to the edge, to a setup that is so different from my daily life, be it a spacedhip or an FBI crew, seems like the most interesting fictional way, for me, to start looking at things.

So the science-fiction or procedural, for me, is just the setup, the placing of the playground. I'm more intersted in the game itself, the people involved and what they do and what makes them do it. And now I have to run out, before I completely mess up my silly metaphore.

Mmm. Jennifer Love Hewitt.

t /animalistic

Cop shows are generally a barrier to entry for me, though I do intend to check out both The Wire and Homicide eventually. But The Inside promos look super-creepy, which is like a wide-open door at the bottom of a hill just begging me to slide on through to meet up with hot women on the other side. Adam and Katie and Tim are all exciting icing - those promos would've made me watch if I had seen them (questionable, given my Fox intake, but shouldn't Entertainment Weekly be mentioning the show at some point soon? Their 2 sentence blurb convinced me to try Veronica Mars way back in the day.)

Nilly, I adore you when you get all wordy. Well, you are adored at all times, but when you get wordy, you make me smile.

Hm. I wonder what my own personal barriers to entry are. Off the top of my head, I'm coming up with makeover shows and Jennifer Love Hewitt. And there has to be something really special to get me to bother with a 1/2 hour format show.

Mine's medical shows. Unless they are comedies. I think that's pretty much it. No, wait. I'm also violently allergic to shows like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Which I don't lump in with medical shows, because I lump it in with after school specials, those NBC The More You Know spots, and those inspirational stories found in Reader's Digest.

Cop shows are generally a barrier to entry for me, though I do intend to check out both The Wire and Homicide eventually.

You should. Well, the latter, at least. I've not seen the former, but Homicide is pretty far removed from your standard cop show. Much of Homicide is mind-blowingly good, and gutting. (It occurs to me that my new-found love for Spooks/MI-5 is rather a bit like my Homicide love, only stronger and more violent. The love, not the show.)

The Inside sounds like it's right up my alley, though I may have to skip episode 9 for the sake of my sanity. (Assuming the description of it as the feel-good dead baby story of the year still holds. I just can't do bad things happening to babies.)

My main barrier to entry is self defined fine upstanding moral shows, which I think is what Plei means by "shows ike Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman". I don't like anything with a lot of blood either, but I am getting better about that, and now only have to fast forward some of CSI.

The Inside sounds like it's right up my alley, though I may have to skip episode 9 for the sake of my sanity. (Assuming the description of it as the feel-good dead baby story of the year still holds. I just can't do bad things happening to babies.)

Plei is me. It's very weird how things about babies didn't bother me, pre-baby. I started watching a repeat of CSI I had seen and enjoyed involving a dead baby and I nearly hyperventilated. Stoopid hormones.

I love procedurals. If The Inside is a character drama wrapped in the disguise of a procedural, I'm on board.

Even if it ends up being derivative of something else, I've seen good derivatives and I wouldn't be put off by that. If it ends up being mind-blowingly original, all the better.

Like any self-respecting persons born in the late 1960s, who came up during the 1970s, and came of age in the 1980s, my husband and I were bred to be cop show groupies.*

When we were dating, a film with a most preposterous title hit the box office, and one of the "marquee" names was best known for his role in a teen-angst drama series. We pointed. We laughed. We mocked.

Fast-forward a few years, and a TV series of the same name (different actors) hits the airwaves. Again, we pointed. We laughed. We mocked some more. "Didn't this thing bomb at the box office?" we said. "How did they ever get a series?" we said. "This is ridiculous," we said. "Who watches this crap?" we said. "Who writes this crap?" we said.

The only words I uttered about that show, and the film which spawned it, that I didn't end up eating after I actually watched it, were along the lines of, "Well, the title is clever, if you assume an inherent ironic contrast." Note the use of I, there. Because we were youngish and in love, I fried up Scott's reply of, "You are giving them way too much credit," with a little butter, and served them up warm, just for him.

I predict Gus will need a hearty, musky, earthy little Chianti, to wash down his posts, come June 8. Who's doing the PayPal thing?

* Columbo, MacLoud, MacMillan and Wife, Adam 12, Starsky and Hutch, S.W.A.T., Police Woman, The Rookies, The Mod Squad, Hill Street Blues, Barney Miller, The Rockford Files, Kojak, Cannon, Baretta, Quincy M.E., Mission Impossible, Hawaii 5-0, Cagney and Lacey

My main barrier to entry is elf defined fine upstanding moral shows

You got some sorta problem with elves???

I predict Gus will need a hearty, musky, earthy little Chianti, to wash down his posts, come June 8. Who's doing the PayPal thing?

I've got 99 cents left in my account, but I'll gladly give it to the cause.

Plei is me. It's very weird how things about babies didn't bother me, pre-baby. I started watching a repeat of CSI I had seen and enjoyed involving a dead baby and I nearly hyperventilated. Stoopid hormones.

Yeah, I'm kind of sad Scott's getting killed off in the dead-baby episode. I don't know what I'll do. As a parent, I avoid stuff like that, because my anxiety-driven parental imagination can whup Tim's word processing program anyday, when it comes to horrible things happening to kids. I don't need to feed the beast. I'll probably TiVo it, and let him watch it, and tell me if I can handle it.

My main barrier to entry is elf defined fine upstanding moral shows

You got some sorta problem with elves???

Hee. I caught that before you posted, and was surpised no one had called me on it.

To me, the 'best' (I hate that word) episodes of Angel are in Season 2, around the Reprise/Reunion/Epithany story arc. Why? The story is ultimately routed in very human areas - the internal battle of 'good/evil', falling off the bandwagon, going over the human edge, reaching the end of the line... Yeah, it's a story about a vampire. That puts a lot of people off from the offset. However, if people can get past that barrier and look at those episodes, anybody who's lived and lost themselves in their 20s should 'get it'. Whilst great drama, it also touched some people (ie me) in a very real, relational way.

The Inside's premise (in terms of marketing), to me, represents a way to take a Tim story, and wrap it in a more accessible format. Generally, people can watch CSI. Try to get them to watch Firefly... You could be in trouble. Scifi and westerns.

I'm not saying Firefly was a bad premise (in fact, the way it was structured was at times TV brilliance), but it wasn't an easy sell. The Inside is an easier sell, it appears, from the outset. And that's a good thing.

Tim, do you mind if I republish your last post on t'interweb? I'm not big on republishing unless it is okay for mass consumption.