God bless the goddamn Onion

The TV coverage is all awful and all in desperate need of harder length limits IMO. Or just an editor demanding that you have something to say rather than systematically listing every joke in an episode of the Simpsons and explaining why it proves that it was the most cutting-edge show on TV at the time or whatever.

― Doctor Casino, Monday, March 4, 2013 11:45 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol rabin doesn't even do that much with the simpsons reviews! they're so drab and shallow and it sounds like he really doesn't want to do it

i hear u lag**n except for 'ruining the magic', bc thats kinda bs plus it supposes that there's a magic to ruin, they're just sitcoms

i've come to really despise van der werff, who i think heads their TV coverage and just, at some point, decided to go ALL IN on the tv-recaps-are-a-super-important-art-form business. like i think he said to himself "this is your life now, this is what it will always be, you must become the greatest of all time (at tv ep recaps)". and he actually seems very knowledgeable about the history of television. if you want to know why there's no limit on their length, it's cause he's in charge of the thing and his recaps are always like a bare minimum of 2k words.

and yet i can't say the tv reviews are any less necessary than the movie/book/music reviews. those just spend a lot less time being totally pointless.

(his recaps are also horseshit, forgot to mention)

i haven't studied on it much - would mean reading recaps - but i've always had the sense that 'recap culture' happened because no one knows how to write about tv.

at least back when recapping was more the province of shippers and fanfic readers/writers, the recappers were self-consciously DOING something with the shows, relating to them in certain ways. now it's more like a pure joyless consumerist time-filler.

suspect recap culture is a late symptom of generation-limbo-style credentialized compulsory 'middle class' college education. hunger for INTERPRETATION of culture-consumables. somehow tv-recaps are like the worst version of it, worse than yelp.

it would be easier to deal with television writing if the standard for pop culture crit in general weren't so strict

everything has to be on the right schedule, can only write about thngs right after they come out or end of year, etc

i was previously unaware of recap culture, sounds like that's a good thing, cd somebody explain roughly what it is?

culture of recaps

now right now, but we can put up a stub until a full recap is ready

so it is just telling people what the plot of an ep was, like it sounds?

jfc

why is it a thing?

not to come over all Finnish, i googled this stuff but the links looked like dark alleys i didn't want to wander down

It's a thing because it's free content, flows smoothly from keyboard to eyeballs.

*sigh* i guess i just wasn't made for these times

anyone who reads tv recaps needs to reconsider their life IMO. Same with anyone who has ever posted .gifs from american sitcoms.

Verging on internet hardmanning there - is there anything else on that list?

XKCD fans

i remember when i first found Mighty Big TV, before it became TV Without Pity, and read some recaps that were absolutely HILARIOUS and functioned like, if not satire, then supplemental entertainment, like Mystery Science Theatre running commentary. it's a shame that format has evolved into something more po-faced. the only time i ever go out of my way to read recaps is if i'm dense or inattentive enough not to understand some plot development or line of dialogue on a show and want to see if anyone can explain it for me (they usually don't).

i hear u lag**n except for 'ruining the magic', bc thats kinda bs plus it supposes that there's a magic to ruin, they're just sitcoms

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Wednesday, March 6, 2013 4:26 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

every sitcom is magical in its own way

I don't think there's anything wrong with recapping, just the writing quality is so uniformly poor. Van Der Werff's writing has really infected the site -- it used to be a lot more idiosyncratic. Also, they're running out of oddballs to interview.

I really love lots of TV comedy, and am interested in comedy writing to some extent professionally, so I fell into the trap of reading everything about the various shows and their writers and the process that I came across but in the end it really is better to have some mystery to the ones you really love and just let them stand as they are

remember when i first found Mighty Big TV, before it became TV Without Pity, and read some recaps that were absolutely HILARIOUS and functioned like, if not satire, then supplemental entertainment, like Mystery Science Theatre running commentary. it's a shame that format has evolved into something more po-faced. the only time i ever go out of my way to read recaps is if i'm dense or inattentive enough not to understand some plot development or line of dialogue on a show and want to see if anyone can explain it for me (they usually don't).

Yes, agreed. I don't read recaps anymore, but Mighty Big TV & early TWOP managed to do something very fun & funny with it.

and its always on a very hack level, like whos the audience surrogate here folks whats this characters arc, not that quality professionals dont think about those things, but you have to have artistry along w the craft, and thats not so easy to express as screenwriting for dummies

― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 6, 2013 4:07 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya it all kind of just feels like tv fantasy camp if that makes any sense

I remember when it was Dawson's Wrap.

i can think of at least three reasons not to read "Onion A/V Club 'Community' TV Recaps" so I'm shocked to see that they are letting people down itt

i dont think anyone is being... let down... by them?

is anyone reading them

the Community handwringing is doing more to drive me away from AV Club than the layout ever could

― my super interesting Kant story (DJP), Friday, March 1, 2013 2:42 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the Community reviews especially, I looked at one lately and it seemed like the writer was trying to get it all out before he burst into tears at the loss of Dan Harmon

― ta-nehisi goatse (fadanuf4erybody), Monday, March 4, 2013 11:42 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i see only evidence of 'handwringing' and 'looking' case dismissed

i remember maybe the one time last year i sought out a tv recap was the Eagleheart episode where the last five minutes was just a parody of the ET Ride at Universal Studios, which I thought was such a surreal topic for a TV show that I just wanted to see if anyone had something to say about it. The EXPERT at the onion who recaps 15 minute Adult Swim shows didnt even recognize the ride and the comments savaged him and it was like "What is the point of all this?" but then I guess I technically googled it so

i tried to find a recap of a house of cards episode cause i totally forgot one of the plot threads and was confused but then i couldnt

i've found recaps useful as service-y things for when i didn't pay attention to some episode because i was reading or something and it didn't seem that good or interesting, so i'm not going to watch it again, but i may want to know continuing plot points or something or remind myself who some character is that all of a sudden ends up dead or something. so on the one hand they're these service-y, useful things that are handy to have around.

on the other hand, they're really intern fare at best and i can't imagine how miserable it would be to have to write them all the time for an actual living.

(loved hamilton's gawker recaps of girls season one though, which were pure foam flecked bile)

i looked at the vulture rss feed recently and some poor guy was still recapping, in extensive detail, recent episodes of 'the office,' and it was like, poor guy

"the one guy made a creepy sex joke again and then the main dude looked into the camera."

but like, 1500 words of that. can you imagine

with a lot of like, musing, about jim's character and stuff

it was like 95% musing

"the one guy made a creepy sex joke again and then the main dude looked into the camera."

― man wii u (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, March 6, 2013 8:59 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i would read them if they were in that voice

the receptionist is perky, so perky, plz let me go

tv recaps are like if every record review was like the ones that just describe what happens on the album, as if you can't pull it up on Spotify.

"Then the galloping drums stop on a dime and bixler-zavala lets out a bone chilling howl. The bass sputters for air."

with a lot of like, musing, about jim's character and stuff

― zero dark (s1ocki), Wednesday, March 6, 2013 9:00 AM

it was like 95% musing

― zero dark (s1ocki), Wednesday, March 6, 2013 9:01 AM

I bet they don't even pay that well! That's sad.

Vulture let Patton Oswalt recap "American Idol" a few seasons ago and it was pretty hilarious.

David Sims's recaps for the Kevin Bacon show, "The Following" have been funny because he clearly hates the shit out of the show. e.g.,

…wait a second. That FBI agent? The one who’s not (R.I.P.) Reilly? Or Debra? Or Shawn Ashmore? The other one? Played by Dean Alai, apparently? Well he goes by the name of DAVID SIMS. WITH ONE M. I found this out when checking the IMDb credits for this episode while writing this review. Has anyone said this guy’s full name on screen? I’m genuinely frightened and also impressed with Kevin Williamson’s forethought. How did he know I’d be reviewing this show/that I’d hate it so much?

yeah i mean i'll post on an ilx thread about a show sometimes right after the episode, but i can't imagine having DEADLINES of "oh, the episode ended 20 minutes ago, gotta finish this 3k-word treatise on it!"

the seven best ways to kill jim shoot darts into his eyes when he looks at the camera ep5 s12 office recap

i can't imagine spending more than 5 seconds reading one of those hate-recaps

I don't want to dwell on the shows I hate, like Girls.

you know what else bugs me, is those posts, usually in the awl, that are in a "conversational" or IM format, with lots of exclamation marks

gah. I'm starting to have opinions about tv recaps

Wait, it wasn't Patton Oswalt, it was Paul F. Tompkins: http://www.vulture.com/2011/01/american_idol_paul_f_tompkins_1.html

PFT is hilarious but im still not gonna read those