I think it's time for a linkspam

[next_to_normal]

* I still haven't gotten around to House of Cards, but as a longtime West Wing fan, I'm really glad that politics is becoming a feature of so many TV shows lately. I don't know that I'd necessarily call them "political procedurals," since most of the shows mentioned - of the ones I've watched, which is Parks and Rec, Scandal, Battleground, Nashville, and 1600 Penn, and someone on Twitter also suggested The Good Wife should be included in this genre - are actually very serialized in their storytelling and could only loosely be described as having a "political crisis of the week" the way legal, medical, or police procedurals have cases of the week. Scandal started out that way in season 1, but season 2 has gone full-tilt into serialized plot, which - even though it's been absolutely off-the-wall bananas, lol - has actually turned it into a much more interesting show. I feel like part of that is the nature of politics, because unlike those other professions, politics is almost always in pursuit of a long-term goal, whether it's winning an election or passing a bill or whatever. And so you always have to be moving the story forward, whereas a doctor or lawyer or crime scene investigator can be a lot more static.

* Speaking of shows with a political bent, HOW GOOD WAS LAST NIGHT'S AMERICANS? Here's a nice write-up that focuses on the show's intersecting themes of marriage and feminism. Matthew Rhys also talks about the show and why Keri Russell keeps slapping him before takes.

* Emmy Rossum talks about Shameless, which is another excellent show you should be watching.

* Lost Girl is getting a fourth season.

* If Touch gets canceled, I won't be sorry to see Kiefer Sutherland shift to playing "the world's most wanted criminal."

* Cool new poster for Iron Man 3.

ETA: The guys behind Next to Normal are making another musical! WITH IDINA MENZEL! \o/

Comments

[jae]

I get your objection, but I do think many of the so-called "political procedurals" are procedurals, just in the "new procedural" sense: the newish genre that combines a story-of-the-week with a larger story arc in which there's real ongoing character development over time. (For what it's worth, I do think the Good Wife is one of this new genre, but as a legal procedural; the political stuff on that show is much less story-of-the-week.)

Thanks for the "Americans" links (our mutual love for that show is why I subscribed to your journal, in case that's not obvious)! You can post more stuff like that anytime and you will make me very happy. :)

-J

[next_to_normal]

Yeah, procedurals as a genre are definitely shifting away from the old episodic model. The hybrid model (story-of-the-week with a larger story arc in which there's real ongoing character development) is getting much more popular, which blurs the line between procedural and serial.

In any show, no matter how serialized, you're going to have a self-contained episode arc - every episode has to tell some kind of complete story, even if it's just a stepping stone, a smaller goal that leads to achieving the larger goal. The distinction between serial and procedural at this point seems to be how often the story of the week would still make sense outside the context of the long-term arc. (For example, all the Scandal eps that dealt with the assassination attempt or the Defiance cover-up vs. weekly cases like last week's with the political marriage.)

I would agree that The Good Wife is more of a legal procedural than anything else. That's a case where the political elements are the long-term character arc, and not the main focus of the show.