TV Streaming series to talk about.

[sringwal]

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it.

I have absolutely zero problem with genre, as I'm a sucker for any number of formulaic and derivative science fiction novels. I find those large-scale patterns of subtle repetition and variation to be, dare I say it, beautiful. Rom coms--beautiful! In fact, I'm much more likely to bristle at modernist-cum-romantic pretensions to sui generis acts of creation than I am at the millionth iteration on this or that genre.

My point is not that Star Wars is a genre unto itself. I fully agree that this "universe" can sustain genres like crime noir or the political thriller or whatever. The point is that writers and directors and producers have to tell stories in these universes to begin with. Why do I have to learn about fighting authoritarianism in a story with Wookies? IP dominates what could otherwise be straightforward genre exercise in television and film because of how studios and streamers finance production. Andrew Dewaard gets into the grim and gritty details in the academic monograph Derivative Culture.

Imagine if Martin Scorsese had to set Mean Streets on Tattoine?

As for Andor, I would argue that Disney is not greenlighting it on the assumption that the series will lose money. Disney is greenlighting Andor to revitalize Star Wars for market segments that may have dismissed the brand as juvenile or unserious; it is trying to get parents--not just kids--interested in Disney+. I don't know the production timeline for Andor, but it was probably greenlit under Chapek around '20 or '21 when Disney made a huge streaming push that required LucasFilm, Pixar, and Marvel Entertainment to make direct-to-streaming content. A few years later, the Disney board bounced Chapek for streaming overproduction: billions in losses. When Iger returned as CEO, he radically curtailed the production of such content--it's why the only long-form original Pixar content for Disney+ is that Dream Studios (and Inside Out spinoff) and the upcoming softball cartoon.

George Lucas was something of a pretentious modernist muppet in the late 1960s and early 1970s. If you watch the opening scene of Filmmaker, his 1968 documentary about the making of The Rain People (Coppola, 1969), you see two kids on a beach making castles in the sand. The quasi-autuerist symbolism is obvious. The irony, of course, is that now everyone has to make product in the sandbox that Lucas (and his corporate ilk) made.

All of this makes sense. And there is some logic to what you are saying. At the same time, Gilroy and the cast seem to have completely bought into this project. Rogue One might have been Gilroy's Mean Streets on Tattoine, but it seems to me that this is something more for him - he doesn't seem to viewing it as holding him back:

theplaylist.net/andor-tony-gilroy-rules-out-more-star-wars-but-calls-rebellion-series-the-most-important-thing-ill-ever-do-20250320/

“I don’t think I’ll ever have a chance to work on anything as important as this,” he said of his “Andor” series. “This has been the most important thing I’ll ever get to do in terms of how much imagination went into it, how much work went into it, how much of a better writer I became doing it, how much I learned doing it, and how important the subject matter was and the scale of it. It’s hard to imagine that a situation like this would ever come around again.”

 

[Geisterfahrer]

I love some Billy Bob Thornton and he remains completely watchable, but Landman sucks.

 

[breepf]

All of this makes sense. And there is some logic to what you are saying. At the same time, Gilroy and the cast seem to have completely bought into this project. Rogue One might have been Gilroy's Mean Streets on Tattoine, but it seems to me that this is something more for him - he doesn't seem to viewing it as holding him back:

theplaylist.net/andor-tony-gilroy-rules-out-more-star-wars-but-calls-rebellion-series-the-most-important-thing-ill-ever-do-20250320/

“I don’t think I’ll ever have a chance to work on anything as important as this,” he said of his “Andor” series. “This has been the most important thing I’ll ever get to do in terms of how much imagination went into it, how much work went into it, how much of a better writer I became doing it, how much I learned doing it, and how important the subject matter was and the scale of it. It’s hard to imagine that a situation like this would ever come around again.”

I always take trade talk with a grain of salt. I don't doubt that there is some truth to how he feels, but what is he going to say? "This is just one more stop in the beautiful arc which is my career. Disney: eat my balls."

I guess we're just making moral judgments about different parts of the production pipeline. However enthralling Andor may be (admittedly, I never finished the pilot), I think that the necessity of pre-sold IP impoverishes the types of filmmaking that casts and crews can do. To return to the previous sorts of examples that I offered, I think The Wire would be much worse if David Simon had to set it in Gotham City. And I think our culture is worse to the extent that IP dominates how writers and directors and actors tell stories about the world we inhabit. I'd be happier if Gilroy could work on an ambitious sci-fi political thriller without having to accommodate the Star Wars brand or, for that matter, contribute to its capaciousness. Put another way, let Gilroy's hypothetical contribution be regaled as a great contribution to the SF genre as such and not, first and foremost, as a contribution to DIsney-owned IP lore.

Once upon a time, to be an adult was to put away childish things. But now Disney and the like retool the childish things--but only in part--to accompany us on the journey into adulthood. And there's another irony: corporations will no longer nurture workers from the cradle to the grave, but they will nurture consumers in that fashion.

(As an aside, I am a thoroughgoing Star Wars hater, though I think Lucas's career is fascinating. That being said, I will read almost any amount of garbage Batman and X-Men comics).

 

[sringwal]

"Put another way, let Gilroy's hypothetical contribution be regaled as a great contribution to the SF genre as such and not, first and foremost, as a contribution to DIsney-owned IP lore."

Absolutely. Gilroy, the cast, and crew deserve the credit here, not Disney. But Disney should be lauded for getting out of its own way and allowing Gilroy pretty much free range.

I wouldn't want Wire to have been set in Gotham, but there is place to make a profound show that is set in the seedy underbelly that is Batman's stomping ground. I have hope that someday we will see Cataclysm/No Man's Land turned into a transcendent show.

DC comics benefited greatly from the boundary pushing of British writers who cut their teeth on 2000 AD and Heavy Metal, particularly in comics such as Watchmen, The Question, Grell's Green Arrow, Camelot 3000, and the host of Berger books that eventually became the Vertigo Imprint.

The goal shouldn't be IP purity—it should be IP transformation: The question isn’t whether IP should exist, but whether artists can reshape it in ways that challenge its audience. That’s a different, and more interesting, fight than writing it off wholesale.

 

[Geisterfahrer]

"Put another way, let Gilroy's hypothetical contribution be regaled as a great contribution to the SF genre as such and not, first and foremost, as a contribution to DIsney-owned IP lore."

Absolutely. Gilroy, the cast, and crew deserve the credit here, not Disney. But Disney should be lauded for getting out of its own way and allowing Gilroy pretty much free range.

I wouldn't want Wire to have been set in Gotham, but there is place to make a profound show that is set in the seedy underbelly that is Batman's stomping ground. I have hope that someday we will see Cataclysm/No Man's Land turned into a transcendent show.

DC comics benefited greatly from the boundary pushing of British writers who cut their teeth on 2000 AD and Heavy Metal, particularly in comics such as Watchmen, The Question, Grell's Green Arrow, Camelot 3000, and the host of Berger books that eventually became the Vertigo Imprint.

The goal shouldn't be IP purity—it should be IP transformation: The question isn’t whether IP should exist, but whether artists can reshape it in ways that challenge its audience. That’s a different, and more interesting, fight than writing it off wholesale.

Speaking of Gotham, the Penguin is totally overrated. Just another mob show. Colin Ferrell in a fat suit and New Yawk accent is mildly fun, and Cristin Milioti is compulsively watchable, but that show sucks.

 

[sringwal]

Speaking of Gotham, the Penguin is totally overrated. Just another mob show. Colin Ferrell in a fat suit and New Yawk accent is mildly fun, and Cristin Milioti is compulsively watchable, but that show sucks.

Real talk: The Penguin is my favorite member of Batman's Rogue gallery. I quit on Penguin three episodes in. It was Falcone's story superimposed on The Penguin, rather than a story about The Penguin. It was a fine story, but the wrong character. The Penguin should never be a bruiser.

 

[breepf]

"Put another way, let Gilroy's hypothetical contribution be regaled as a great contribution to the SF genre as such and not, first and foremost, as a contribution to DIsney-owned IP lore."

Absolutely. Gilroy, the cast, and crew deserve the credit here, not Disney. But Disney should be lauded for getting out of its own way and allowing Gilroy pretty much free range.

I wouldn't want Wire to have been set in Gotham, but there is place to make a profound show that is set in the seedy underbelly that is Batman's stomping ground. I have hope that someday we will see Cataclysm/No Man's Land turned into a transcendent show.

DC comics benefited greatly from the boundary pushing of British writers who cut their teeth on 2000 AD and Heavy Metal, particularly in comics such as Watchmen, The Question, Grell's Green Arrow, Camelot 3000, and the host of Berger books that eventually became the Vertigo Imprint.

The goal shouldn't be IP purity—it should be IP transformation: The question isn’t whether IP should exist, but whether artists can reshape it in ways that challenge its audience. That’s a different, and more interesting, fight than writing it off wholesale.

I would counter that genre as such already accomplishes your vision for a transformative IP: it depends on variations that entertain and sometimes challenge audiences. Trace the generic arc from, say, It Happened One Night to Pillow Talk to Annie Hall. To quote Socrates, it is a transformation that's profound as fuck. And, moreover, anyone can conceivably make a romcom without kowtowing to the demands of corporate brand management--anyone can contribute to this ledger of achievement because it is public, not proprietary.

In turn, your comic book examples underscore the dangers of wading into the muck and mire of corporate IP. Studios and streamers do not care for culture that they do not monopolize through IP. Hence the lawsuit over The People's Joker--deep down DC/WB considers that idea anathema. Or how underground, unlicensed comic books about Wolverine or Spider-Man or Batman have to stay underground, or else. Previously, you mentioned Kirby. Now Moore's Watchmen. You know what's coming next. The former invented 80% of the superhero pantheon only to get promptly fucked over. The latter saw DC take his characters to create a sandbox--against his wishes--for other artists. I haven't read The League of Extraordinary Gentleman in its entirety, but I'm confident that a comic book that conspicuously features public-domain characters is polemicizing against the Big Two and corporate art in general. (Plus his usual weird sex/consent stuff).

In sum (and apologies if I sound like a broken record), the problem with this IP is who owns it and how it swamps culture as such. The problem is not the degree of control that Disney does--or does not--give Gilroy, which Disney could change at a whim. The problem is that he has to bother with Star Wars to tell a story that could just as easily be severed from all that shit, or all that Batman shit, or all that X-Men shit, or all that Harry Potter shit. Of course, he can't get financing without that shit.

 

[sringwal]

Damnit. What you just wrote about Kirby and Moore is a really good counter argument. Let me mull that for a bit.

If you are interested in a contemporary comic that runs with the points you are making, then I highly recommend Zdarsky's comic Public Domain. It's one of the best metanarrative comics that takes on the business of making comics.

Speaking of Public Domain characters, I'm reading Jim Krueger and Alex Ross' Project Superpowers largely based on my love of Earth X, which I believe is the most important, and most overlooked, Marvel comic miniseries.

It's a really good story, but it is, in part, difficult to get into because I don't know the characters the way I do Marvel and DC characters, and I haven't watched how they have evolved over the decades. I'll update my thoughts when I finish it, as I have mixed feelings about IPs, and most notably Disney - we all can name at least one Disney story (not just one story from a property currently owned by Disney) that played a formative role in shaping who we are.

We are often tasked with separating the art from the artist. Is the same not also true from the art and the IP? I don't know. But I do know that I wouldn't be the person that I am today - and I probably wouldn't have taken on a career that I have shaped around the importance of storytelling - without consuming Disney stories.

Andor works as a non-Star Wars property, but placing the story inside a modern myth enriches all other Star Wars projects. And to go back to your point about The Wire, it may not exist within a superhero universe, but it is still a part of the Time Warner conglomerate. Does it's placement outside of that universe make the endeavor more noble? I don't know.

 

[hedge]

the problem with this IP is who owns it and how it swamps culture as such.

Funny that you mention Alan Moore and swamps in the same post, his revival of Swamp Thing was one of my most pleasant comics reading experiences ever. Used to pick up the new monthly issues at Sutton's and then get high and read it several times. I'd been reading and collecting comics since I was a kid (I bought the issue of The Hulk in which Wolverine was introduced off the rack - still have it, but it's in rough shape), but the artwork and writing of Moore's Swamp Thing blew my mind. I've enjoyed pretty much everything I read by him since then..

 

[sringwal]

If you are interested in reading a truly great indy comic by Alan Moore, I highly recommend Top-10, which is a procedural book that blows the shit out of the superhero genre, but in a weirdly uplifting way (it's also a hell of a book to get high and read).

 

[breepf]

Damnit. What you just wrote about Kirby and Moore is a really good counter argument. Let me mull that for a bit.

If you are interested in a contemporary comic that runs with the points you are making, then I highly recommend Zdarsky's comic Public Domain. It's one of the best metanarrative comics that takes on the business of making comics.

Speaking of Public Domain characters, I'm reading Jim Krueger and Alex Ross' Project Superpowers largely based on my love of Earth X, which I believe is the most important, and most overlooked, Marvel comic miniseries.

It's a really good story, but it is, in part, difficult to get into because I don't know the characters the way I do Marvel and DC characters, and I haven't watched how they have evolved over the decades. I'll update my thoughts when I finish it, as I have mixed feelings about IPs, and most notably Disney - we all can name at least one Disney story (not just one story from a property currently owned by Disney) that played a formative role in shaping who we are.

We are often tasked with separating the art from the artist. Is the same not also true from the art and the IP? I don't know. But I do know that I wouldn't be the person that I am today - and I probably wouldn't have taken on a career that I have shaped around the importance of storytelling - without consuming Disney stories.

Andor works as a non-Star Wars property, but placing the story inside a modern myth enriches all other Star Wars projects. And to go back to your point about The Wire, it may not exist within a superhero universe, but it is still a part of the Time Warner IP. Does it's placement outside of that universe make the endeavor more noble? I don't know.

Yeah, once you betrayed your comic book nerdom by namedropping Karen Berger, the Kirby-Moore one-two punch became a no-brainer.

Can we separate the art from the IP? That's a provocative formulation. My first instinct would be to say that Andor and other "prestige" IP seek to cultivate a quality of consumer demand that executes that very separation on behalf of Disney. It's one reason why a message board of college graduates and post-graduates can wax philosophical about Rogue One and Andor for pages on end. The whole "modern mythology" argument has a long pedigree in mass culture--the studios encouraged similar arguments in the 1930s. Studio manufacturing plants were not these management-dominated hybrids of craft workshops and assembly-line production. No sir: they were "dream factories."

Marvel's version of the studio-era dream factory might very well be Stan Lee's Bullpen. What a place to work!

I think your counterpoint about The Wire is a good one. In my opinion, part of what it points towards is how corporations expediently define prestige to exploit their unique batch of resources.

To wit, Simon could never get Disney to greenlight The Wire because gritty urban crime shows do not really burnish the Disney brand. But HBO did finance The Wire because the show flattered its burgeoning corporate self-conception as the home of sweeping prestige television. (When movies mattered, HBO wasn't called Home Box Office for nothing). For HBO, what gives The Wire its prestige is Simon's growing reputation as an auteur showrunner. In part, that reputation borrows from more traditional 20th c. views on art, including the "completeness" and integrity of the show as an artifact. In short, no, you can't have a spinoff called David Simon's Tales from the Wire or Bubbles on the Loose. But HBO can get into the David Simon business, and thus finance subsequent 'auteur' shows like those about housing and porno. David Simon is an imperfect approximation of IP because HBO doesn't own him; instead, it has to treat him well to maintain his cooperation. The same goes for studios and star actors or hot-shit directors.

In the 1990s and 2000s, HBO built its brand on making TV auteurs. But that's not Disney's style. When Disney wants to go prestige, it has to fit this imperative within wider IP strategies. And so it gives Gilroy permission to do prestige Star Wars and kills two birds (prestige! IP!) with one stone (Andor!).

In sum, Simon is implicated in the corporate malarkey at HBO, but in terms that he's better able to control. If HBO cuts loose Simon, he takes the Simon brand elsewhere. If Disney cuts loose Gilroy, Andor stays with Disney.

Top10 wasn't one of my go-to Moore comics. I like Miracleman, the 80s DC stuff, From Hell and, especially Providence--what a mindfuck that last one was.

 

[hedge]

What's IP?

 

[hedge]

Marvel's version of the studio-era dream factory might very well be Stan Lee's Bullpen.

Excelsior!

 

[breepf]

What's IP?

intellectual property

 

[sringwal]

Yeah, once you betrayed your comic book nerdom by namedropping Karen Berger, the Kirby-Moore one-two punch became a no-brainer.

I picked Berger for two reasons - 1) because you know your shit and I figured you would get the reference, and 2) because I believe that all IPs should be run the way that she ran Vertigo.

 

[breepf]

If you are interested in a contemporary comic that runs with the points you are making, then I highly recommend Zdarsky's comic Public Domain. It's one of the best metanarrative comics that takes on the business of making comics.

Speaking of Public Domain characters, I'm reading Jim Krueger and Alex Ross' Project Superpowers largely based on my love of Earth X, which I believe is the most important, and most overlooked, Marvel comic miniseries.

I mostly know Zdarsky from his participation in a manga podcast. I've only ever read one Batman tpb that he wrote, which I did not like. I've heard his Daredevil comics are good. I'll try to track down a used copy of Public Domain.

 

[altmin]

I have really been enjoying this while in England. Not sure if it is on BBC America or anything else, but really interesting show. Every episode is a stand alone story, no continuity at all besides the main creators being in most episodes playing different characters in each.

It's a very dark comedy.

Inside No. 9 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[nycfan]

Did you watch season 1 in full?

No. I just watched the second episode of the first season last night. My husband doesn’t like binge watching or even more than one episode a week and no more than one drama show at a time (so finish one show before starting a new one). So if we watch something together, we poke along one episode of one show per week.

 

[sringwal]

No. I just watched the second episode of the first season last night. My husband doesn’t like binge watching or even more than one episode a week and no more than one drama show at a time (so finish one show before starting a new one). So if we watch something together, we poke along one episode of one show per week.

It is worth it.

 

[p5mmr9]

No. I just watched the second episode of the first season last night. My husband doesn’t like binge watching or even more than one episode a week and no more than one drama show at a time (so finish one show before starting a new one). So if we watch something together, we poke along one episode of one show per week.

So, the entire series uses a 3 episode arc story line framework. The first three episodes are probably the "worst" of the entire series. It just takes a while for the show to find its legs, but episode 3 is very good - but it gets a lot better from there. It's an incredible series. The season 1 finale alone is worth the effort.

Season 2 thus far is of equal quality.