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Retrospectiva OEsquema 2012: Televisão às tijoladas

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Com terças e sextas comprometidas com saídas de casa semanais, 2012 acabou, por outro lado, sendo um ano bem indoor, em que além de organizar as coisas em casa, consegui dar cabo em várias pendências televisivas que não consegui acompanhar em tempo real. Matei séries inteiras que acabaram faz tempo (My Name is Earl, Arrested Development, Freaks & Geeks, o longo débito com The Wire) e consegui acompanhar hits atuais para acompanhar em tempo real (Sherlock, Parks & Recreation, Homeland, Modern Family, Mad Men, Louie, Ancient Aliens, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Newsroom) – que passaram a acompanhar a única série atual que sigo desde o início, Fringe. Com esse intensivão, comecei a encarar as séries como encaro sagas em quadrinhos – e em vez de acompanhá-las semanalmente, prefiro digeri-las às temporadas (no caso dos quadrinhos, aos volumes dos TPBs). Já havia feito isso em anos passados, assistindo Sopranos, A Sete Palmos e Battlestar Galactica às tijoladas enquanto criava um ranking interior, mas 2012 me ensinou que esteve talvez seja o melhor jeito de consumir estes seriados, que devem estar entre as principais obras de arte pop da atualidade (mesmo que eu não tenha nem conseguido começar a acompanhar coisas como Games of Thrones ou Walking Dead). O que também dá uma sensação ímpar ao final de qualquer série – o ar de dever cumprido e o astral de ser uma pessoa melhor, como Earl ao final de cada episódio em que riscava um item de sua lista.

Alan Moore vê TV

A Wizard entrevistou o Alan Moore sobre seus televisão e ele falou sobre alguns dos seriados favoritos aqui. Ele curte The Wire e South Park, não gostou do Family Guy ter pego leve com o Guerra nas Estrelas (“uma sátira aprovada!”, reclama), não gosta de Lost e Heroes e tem um mau presságio sobre o fim de Battlestar Galactica, além de comentar como funciona parte do entretenimento antes.

THE WIRE (HBO)
“It’s probably one of the best pieces of television I’ve ever seen. The only problem with it is that it makes everything else looks kind of sad and poorly written and poorly conceived. The fact is, that as, I think [series creator] David Simon justifiably says somewhere on the closing extra features,’ ‘Everything we raised, we resolved.’ And just that simple statement explains why ‘The Wire’ is so far ahead of any other television that I’ve seen. Every tiny little thing, even inconsequential things that were raised in the first series, were incredibly, dramatically resolved by the end of the fifth. It bears going back and watching again, probably several times.”

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (Sci Fi)
“I have seen the first half of the final series of ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ It’s well done, but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen the final episodes, because it could, as with so many of these things, end up as a bit of a mess. It seemed that they got a bit self-conscious about making some kind of political analogies that ended up being a bit confusing and ham fisted and perhaps spoiling. I feel that the big problem with most of these programs is that people start off with the good beginnings of an idea. That is disastrous because that is enough to get a show commissioned. So you’ve got the beginnings of a good idea and if it’s not brought to its conclusion properly, it won’t be a good idea at all; it’ll be a waste of everybody’s time. It’ll be a waste of the creator’s time, and more importantly it’ll be a complete waste of the audience’s time. I mean, if you have been following a show expecting it to have a kind of payoff and you’ve been following it for three or four seasons and then at the end, it turns out Bobby Ewing comes out of the shower and one of the characters wakes up and says, ‘Oh, Bobby, I’ve just had the most strange dream!’ You know? There’s a lot of hours, days of your life that you’re never gonna get back again, you know? So if people are gonna invest this much time and enthusiasm, genuine enthusiasm, in these shows, I really think that they ought to pay off. The writers ought to know what the end is; at least the important parts of it before they start and not do anything that is gonna turn out to be irrelevant, pointless or just a confusing red herring.”

LOST (ABC)
“I saw the first few episodes and there were already so many inconsistencies where all the writer would have had to have done was check back to the previous episode. I have no confidence in them knowing where they are going. I think they’re just thinking of weird things week by week.”

SOUTH PARK (Comedy Central)
“I’m very much enjoying the editions of ‘South Park’ that I’ve seen. I think that those guys have got real moral integrity, you know? They really have. They’re kind of fearless. I wouldn’t agree with everything that they say, but God bless them for saying it. I think [Trey] Parker and [Matt] Stone are real troopers. They’re really good.”

FAMILY GUY (Fox)
“I enjoy ‘The Family Guy’ and ‘American Dad’ stuff that I see. We only get them in dribs and drabs. You do tend to sigh a little bit when it gets to, ‘Boy, this is almost as bad as the time when Peter…’ blah, blah, blah fill in the clip. But at the same time, they do some bits that are kind of wonderful. I thought that the soft shoe shuffle of the Dumpster Babies [‘Airport ’07’ episode] was a memorable moment. On the other hand, I did watch the first five or ten minutes of that ‘Family Guy: Blue Harvest,’ and I thought it was rubbish. It was too cozy with George Lucas. It was an approved satire, and how toothless is that? But they’ve had their moments. They’ve done some good stuff. You can’t expect people to do brilliant stuff all the time. Although, actually, I still do.”

HEROES (NBC)
“I saw the last episode of Season One where the flying superhero [Peter Petrelli] and his brother, the exploding superhero [Nathan Petrelli], have a little moment and a bit of a hug and then the flying guy takes the exploding guy up into the atmosphere above New York where he undergoes a nuclear explosion to the great relief of all the spectators. You know, again, it wouldn’t have taken much. All you’d have had to do, as I understand it, and I speak as somebody who doesn’t actually have an Internet connection and has very little idea what an Internet connection is, but I understand there is this thing called ‘Google’ and that apparently you just have to put a couple of words into it and magically it will provide all your reference for you. You don’t even have to get up out of your seat. If you’d have just put, ‘nuclear explosion,’ say, into Google then I’m sure that somewhere in that it would have explained that an air burst is much, much, much, much, much, much worse than a ground burst. I hope that if that unlikely situation should ever come about, I hope that the superpowered beings who will presumably be around to save us from it are perhaps a bit more intelligent, otherwise we’re doomed. So no, I’m not a big fan of ‘Heroes,’ got to say.”