Responses for 11/18

How do the episodes of South Park, Arrested Development, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer demonstrate the television storytelling practices we’ve been reading about? What do they share with soap operas, narratively complex primetime serials, or other modes of storytelling? And how does the mode of viewing isolated episodes rather than part of a whole series impact our understanding?

13 thoughts on “Responses for 11/18

  1. Bianca Giaever

    I think Buffy has the closes resemblance to the soap opera’s that we talked about in class on Tuesday, with the exception of all the action scenes that take place. There was lots of repetition, mostly in dialogue reflecting on what had just happened. For example, Buffy and Willow often talk about what’s happening with Angel. The inner emotions of the characters (Willow’s dismay at Xander and Cordelia’s romance, for example) are definitely a major element of the show. Lastly, there was no resolution at the end of the episode. The saga continues, and we want to find out if Buffy and Angel will ever get back together again. Having never seen the show before, the most confusing part to me was the backstory of the woman trying to separate Angel and Buffy, as well as confusion when Angel turned back into a vampire. Sometimes I wasn’t sure what the viewer was supposed to know and what was unknown information to long-term viewers of the show as well. I had also never seen Southpark, but found that much easier to comprehend. Southpark largely depended on a variety of paratext: from scientology, to Tom Cruise and John Travolta, to R. Kelly and Trapped in the Closet. In all three of the shows I noticed a variety of arcs: whether it was Tobias’ search for work, the awkward relationship between George Michael and his cousin, finding a storage unit, getting people to come out of the closet, or the romance between Willow and her boy (this arc will probably carry on into future episodes).

    1. Patricia

      A lot of South Park relies on the knowledge of pop-culture due to all of the paratext embedded in it. Many of the jokes in the show are gratifying due to our understanding of the happenings in the world that are embedded into the fictional narrative of South Park.

  2. Andrew Silver

    Interestingly, if each show had to be placed into a category, I would mark South Park as the soap opera because of how it rewards viewers for consistency. The scene involving Mr. Mackey becomes twice as funny if you know him as Mr. Mackey, the student’s up-tight vice principal and not some random goofball. Cartman’s line about still hating kyle more than stan would be lost on an non-consistent viewer. The show also rewards viewers for their consistency on knowing current events. While South Park works on a fart joke level, it’s main comedic aspect comes in assuming it’s audience know about current events in the world (the rise of Scientology) and ripping them apart.
    I would put Buffy into the prime-time serial category. While I’ve now only seen three episodes, I think I can safely say that most of Buffy’s arcs (relationship between Willow and Xander, Buffy’s struggle against Angel) play out over a full, or maybe multiple seasons while sub-plots (the Judge) are wrapped up in one or two episodes. The viewer is definitely still rewarded for consistency, but longer story arcs make it easier to catch up.
    While South Park is obviously a standalone show as well, I’d still put Arrested Development into the category over it. Every episode of Arrested Development (or maybe just the one I’ve now seen) fills you in on exactly how this family got into the situation they find themselves in in the opening credits. The omniscient narrator is always reminding you who’s who, and even chiming in about their personalities every once in a while.

    1. Patricia

      In a way, the narrator in Arrested Developed is one of the most important narrative techniques of the show. Would you agree that the narrator is a character himself or just a device that helps to frame the show? Could it be both? Just a few questions that popped into my head as I was reading your post…

  3. Joshua Aichenbaum

    I would agree with what you’re saying about Buffy, for the most part. There is a lot of redundancy and an ongoing romantic seriality going on between Willow and her guy, even with her and Xander and Xander with Cordelia, and also between Buffy and Angel, but the two-parter we saw was also very episodic. The conflict of the judge was established, explained, given a chance to rise, and then was resolved. To my limited knowledge (I haven’t seen too much of Buffy), the judge never returns again. We can see Buffy taking on soap’s emotional range via a much condensed community-centered cast, but, at the same time, recognize that it differs in that it takes on a greater balance between a episodic and serial format.

    As to the difference it makes seeing a single episode out of context, I think doing so reveals whether and how a show is being successfully redundant. An experience viewer, on first mention, would know that Priscilla and Angel have some sort of history, whereas a new viewer would only learn that info once it became absolutely necessary to know so. i.e., A noob learns they had a relationship when Angel turns evil and reenters the evil fold. Angel explains he is toying with Buffy as he did with Priscilla, because it will hurt Buffy the most. Thus, all is explained when it needs to be explained, which would again be calling upon soap opera norms.

      1. Patricia

        Honestly, having seen Buffy again, I have a lower opinion of her. Sure, she fights vampires, is extremely intelligent and assertive, but she doesn’t quite re-define gender roles the way I once thought she did. The way that Angel (seemingly) takes advantage of her and her subsequent reaction presents a very stereotypical view on women. At the end of the day, she is a “tough” girl with feelings and love and all that other stuff. I feel like even the whole Angel/Buffy love plot is to cater to a particular demographic… Buffy and Angel could have just as easily been best friends. Just saying… there is a very soap-operatic element to the whole thing.

  4. Ralph Acevedo

    I think there is a lot that prime time serials have in common with soap operas, probably more than would be admitted due to the cultural stigma associated with soap operas. Categories of modes and genre will always be slippery. Buffy: The Vampire Slayer can be non-problematically labeled a prime time serial. One thing that I think is interesting is the truism that any good story, in any medium, must have some element of melodrama or relationship drama to be narratively compelling. Viewers must be emotionally invested in characters, regardless of genre (horror, sci-fi, comedy, etc.). It seems that soap operas place an extreme emphasis on this character development with little focus with respect to action (as evidenced by the “ripple effect”). In this way, do soaps do to emotion and character relationships what movies like Transformers and The Expendables do to action and spectacle? Would a show like Buffy, or even most mainstream prime time serials, be a balance between the two extremes? I agree that the action element of “The Judge” would probably fall under the “Monster of the Week” episodic category, while the relationships between Angel and Buffy or Willow and Xander would carry on over the course of the series.

    1. Patricia

      Ralph, I wholeheartedly agree with your comment that “there is a lot that prime time serials have in common with soap operas, probably more than would be admitted due to the cultural stigma associated with soap operas.” Even the opening credits of “Arrested Development” are somewhat soap opera-esque with their summarization/re-cap of what the show is about. I don’t see how the opening could be any more explicit.

  5. Nora Sheridan

    It was strange to see how, when you’re looking for it, Arrested Development shares a lot with soap operas. As Andrew pointed out there’s plenty of redundancy. The show uses a lot of flashback to explain things. While the opening credits might indicate that Michael is the man we’re focused on, I think the show focuses much more on the community of characters and the way they interact. Viewers also have favorite characters and relationships(Patty said she likes Gob. I was sad that Buster wasn’t in this episode). There are definitely several story arcs, most of which are not resolved by the end of the episode. The closure we feel comes from the narrator explaining what lessons the characters have learned.

  6. Dustin Schwartz

    I definitely see the “wave” of intensities throughout the Buffy-two part episode that Warhol mentioned (within many of the love triangles between the characters) and I do see how it would continue past these two episodes, since the drama surrounding Angel wasn’t resolved by the end–another example of how soap opera attributes (open ended)tie in. I was able to understand the episodes having not really watched the series before, as there were redundant clues about past storylines–especially when they referred to Angel gaining his soul back in the past. I wonder, however, what it would have been like if we just watched the second part of the two-part episode, and not the first.

    If anyone is interested–there’s this film called Soapdish from 1991 that has a really humorous satirical take on soap operas, onscreen and offscreen.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102951/

  7. James Stepney

    Specifically, I think there is a larger variation between primetime serials and day-time serials due to the fact that many primetime shows have the ability to be sold to the public in a boxed set separated by seasons. We mentioned in class that shows, such as: General Hospital—which I caught another episode outside of class one day, All My Children, Passions, and As the World Turns all have never released episodes separated and sold for the public. In fact, I think selling day-time soaps would defeat the purpose of much of the expository dialogue and expose how cheesy the stories are after sequentially watching each episode. Being an avid fan of the HBO series, True Blood, I do understand that those who have not watched it would instantly be in the dark, because though in the beginning of each episode there is a re-cap of the previous episode there is no larger foundation to update new-comers, but with day-time soaps there is the re-cap, as well as dialogue that explains what could have happened years ago in the series. However, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, shares a larger connection with True Blood, because one would need the narrative background at the beginning of the series in order to follow what is happening presently—although this is not exclusive as many episodes are episodic. With that said, I feel that South Park, Arrested Development, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer use common modes of serialized television, but at the same time do not exclusively rely on it as each episode does little for the overarching story; unlike day-time soaps. Hence, I would classify these shows as being marginalized between primetime and soap-opera serials.

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