Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Story Arcs in Miniature

I've been away from this blog for a little while, and couldn't quite stick to the mission I set out at the start of the year of turning this into a meta-comedy-in-the-media-critic sort of enterprise. This entry might seem a little inconsequential, but it's something I noticed.

People do go on about how attention spans are shrinking. I think I saw another piece of evidence of this. On the new HBO show, "Veep," which features Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, and which I like so far, the opening credits set out the whole backstory in what must be an unprecedentedly brief amount of time. It's a quick, animated progression of news headlines about Louis-Dreyfuss' character, a senator who ran for president but didn't make the cut in the primaries and ended up becoming the running mate and then vice president. That whole arc is communicated in what must be less than five seconds, and then "Veep" leaps into its first scene.

The show itself, particularly its dialogue, is pretty rapid fire, to the point where Gabi finds it stressful to watch, but I like the wit and sarcasm, the writing and situations, enough to keep it on my list. I wonder if I may be accelerating my ability to focus, a bit too much though, by becoming a fan of it.

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