A second look at Lost’s low point

28Sep09

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m rewatching Lost along with my wife, who is watching for the first time. One of the points in the series I’ve been most looking forward to is the first 6 episodes of season 3 – not because they were my favorite, but because they were my least [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Lost

Going Back to the Island

31Aug09

One of my summer projects has been rewatching Lost. When I started the show back in Fall 2004, my wife watched the pilot with me, but found it too creepy for her anti-horror tastes, so I’ve been viewing solo for the past five seasons. I finally convinced Ruth that the show rarely traffics in scares [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Shows, Television, Viewers   |  4 Comments
Tags: Lost

These Questions Need Answers: An essay on the Veronica Mars pilot

10Aug09

On my writing docket this summer were three essays that I’d committed to: a write-up of my SCMS presentation on Lostpedia (which will be coming out in Transformative Works & Cultures this fall), my piece on serial form and memory, and a long-delayed chapter for an anthology about the series Veronica Mars, edited by Sue [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, Narrative, Representations, TV Shows, Television   |  11 Comments
Tags: pilot, Veronica Mars

Tell My Students What TV To Watch

23Jul09

I’m in the midst of drafting another long article, both to feed the blog and meet a lingering book chapter deadline, and head off-the-grid next week for some family vacation. But in the meantime, I’d like to crowdsource some brainstorming for my fall syllabus. I’ll be teaching Television & American Culture, a course I’ve taught [...]

Filed under: Middlebury, Narrative, TV Shows, Teaching, Television   |  37 Comments

More thoughts on soap operas and television seriality

14Jul09

One of my most-clicked (if not read) posts concerns how my approach to prime time serial television relates to the traditional daytime soap opera. Last year I was asked to expand on those ideas via an interview to be included in a forthcoming anthology edited by Sam Ford, Abigail De Kosnik, and C. Lee Harrington, [...]

Filed under: Genre, Narrative, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: interview, soap opera

Transmedia Storytelling in Television: A Student Thesis

14Jul09

One of the pleasures of working with Middlebury College students is advising independent work on their senior projects. While I don’t have the opportunity to work with graduate students on their dissertations, every once in awhile I have undergraduate students who do exemplary work that feels quite similar to a condensed version of the graduate [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, Middlebury, Narrative, TV Shows, Technology, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: Lost, transmedia

Previously On: Prime Time Serials and the Mechanics of Memory

03Jul09

As is typical for me at the end of the school year, my to-do list has a pile of publishing projects that I’ve put off to the last minute. So I’ve spent the last month knocking things off the list with general success – I revised an essay on Lostpedia that will be coming out [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Narrative, TV Shows, Television, Viewers   |  10 Comments
Tags: Arrested Development, Battlestar, Lost, memory, Six Feet Under, The Wire, Veronica Mars

Picking up Deadwood

22Jun09

One of the challenges of researching contemporary television narrative is time – it simply takes too much of it to watch everything that should be watched. Coupled with my day-to-day responsibilities of teaching, chairing, fathering, reading the internets, and having a life, watching TV can often fall low on the to-do list. (I know I’m [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  13 Comments
Tags: deadwood, The Wire

Notes on Serial Forms conference

10Jun09

I spent part of last week on a quick, tiring, but exciting trip to Zurich. I was an invited presenter at University of Zurich’s conference on Serial Forms, a small but well-focused 3-day conference focused on serial narratives across a range of media.
My own presentation was called “Serial Boxes: The Cultural Value of Long-Form American [...]

Filed under: Academia, Media Studies, Narrative, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: conferences, serial

Listen to me babble

19May09

Just a quick pointer to a podcast: I had the pleasure of recording a podcast with Tim Anderson for his series The Lion’s Share. The series is a great project, opening up the hood on media scholars’ processes of writing, teaching, and thinking about media. Tim & I talked about the impact of the economy [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, MediaCommons, Meta-blogging, Middlebury, Narrative, Teaching, Television   |  1 Comment
Tags: Battlestar, podcast, The Wire

The Lost Payoff

14May09

Gotta take a break from grading to write about Lost’s rollicking season finale, and season 5 in general. Spoilery goodness beneath the fold.

Filed under: Genre, Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  9 Comments
Tags: Lost

Continued disappointment with Friday Night Lights

18Apr09

Back in January, I wrote about my disappointment in the third season of Friday Night Lights. After a wonderful first season, I found the second season more palatable than most fans did, but found the missteps more glaring in the third season, despite the consensus praise for the season as a return to form. Now [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  7 Comments
Tags: friday night lights

Authorship, intentionality and intelligent design

26Mar09

I’ve been thinking a lot about authorship lately, in a range of ways. Most practically, two long-gestating essays that I authored have come out in print – “All in the Game: The Wire, Serial Storytelling and Procedural Logic” is published in the beautifully put-together book Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives edited by Pat [...]

Filed under: Books, Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: authorship, Battlestar, bsg, faith, Lost, The Wire

Jump-starting Dollhouse

25Mar09

I’ve finally caught up with Dollhouse, which had been lingering a bit long on my TiVo. As anyone paying attention to the extratextual buzz knows, last week’s episode, “Man on the Street,” was hyped to deliver the narrative payoff and higher stakes that many feel the series has lacked. I concur with the consensus buzz: [...]

Filed under: Narrative, TV Industry, TV Shows, Television   |  5 Comments
Tags: alias, dollhouse

Remembering Battlestar

22Mar09

Like many, I’ve spent the last couple of days watching and thinking about the Battlestar Galactica finale – my spoiling thoughts are below the fold, both on the finale and some ties between the series and my research on television narrative.
On Facebook, a few of my media scholar/blogger friends and I thought it might be [...]

Filed under: Media Studies, Narrative, TV Shows, Television   |  9 Comments
Tags: Battlestar, bsg, finale, science fiction, The Wire