Thanks, Nilly.

CaBil, would, but I gotta work in the editing room on Sunday. I was thinking of stealing Joss' cutting style.

Perhaps we are facing the problem of projection. People who write these sort of stuff can't imagine that the people who produce are really all that different from them, so they HAVE to be as famaliar with other material as they are, irrespective of the fact that by the defination of being a creator that most of your time and effort is sheperding your own project rather than exhaustively researching everyone else's. Even for no other reason that if you do so, everything has been done before and the only difference is execution...

EtA Sorry for the spelling, but way too tired and laptop barely working in this crummy hotel...

Yes, CaBil. Very true. And if people are watching your thing and their expectation is "why isn't this like Buffy? Why isn't that actor playing it more like that other actor I was thinking of?" They sometimes don't seem to see the thing that actually IS there.

What's a vocal cult, anyway? Do you all talk like me?

In five part harmony, no less.

Wow. A cult of five. We won't need much Kool Aid.

Ha! Not too late, after all.

Is it silly of me to think that - skipper as I am in this thread, because I do not want to read any spoilers - I'm glad I didn't read that article before I could read Tim's reponses to it?

But as far as "The Inside," I do know that after the non-launch we not only held the modest numbers the network brought to the show, but built on them slightly week to week.

I liked the way you once described it, that the network's job is to bring the audience at first, and your job is to keep them. And you keep doing your side.

Cereal (hey, it's morning here):

What's a vocal cult, anyway? Do you all talk like me?

Only if it's in Hebrew.

They sometimes don't seem to see the thing that actually IS there.

It seems like this is what's happening with "The Inside", on several levels, doesn't it? It's not the same "solve the crime" show as others who are centered around such a concept, so instead of checking whether it does what it set out to do, people seem to be saying that it doesn't do well what those other shows set out to do. And now, with the blond-who-isn't-SMG.

Yes, Nilly. That is what I think.

Wow. A cult of five. We won't need much Kool Aid.

The five is just the upper echelon. Like, OT level 8s. Except without the dead aliens living in your head. Because, ewwww.

Hmm, so how is it possible to get out of this vicious circle? Marketing in advance (what a silly notion!)? I love the "take the familiar idea and put it on its head" or "investigate all new things with familiar settings" ways of looking at things.

Thanks to you and Allyson, I got to read the script of the broadcasted pilot. To me, the heart of it wasn't the serial killer, hunting him or out-smarting him. It was Rebecca's trying to find herself, about a young person growing up, or beginning to, taking a first step along that way. The people around her affecting her, or starting to, or trying to, in all sorts of new ways, and her attempt to stand on her own. It was about identity and what shapes you, from the inside - your actions and dreams and pains and attempts - and from the outside - the way people see you, your name (the whole "name" thing was played all along the first episode, IIRC). I loved that. This is where a show about FBI agents and murders in a completely different place becomes about, well, me. So, yeah, it does it by putting people in much more extreme situations than actual everyday life stuff, but that's just as using a space-ship with a broken engine to tell something about people trying to make it in the world, and it also, in a sense, felt to me to be about me.

And I'm babbling. Shutting up now.