Once Upon a Time... ABC Series... I thought Broadcast TV had changed???

J

j1clark@ucsd.edu

Veteran
I've not watched Broadcast TV regularly for years... like decades... like approaching a half-century...

So, I've not really kept up on what shows have been popular, other than tuning into other people's conversations. The Sister-in-Law was 'raving' about this series, and when it came out the Wife bought the Bluray package... we watched the series over the last couple of nights and...

Uck... for a 'good idea', making it for Broadcast TV seems to have taken the 'good idea' and washed in bleach, no wait... more like washing multicolored clothes in hot water and having the colors run, so that everything is a dingy grey.

The dialog sucks, and is heavily tilted towards 'Radio' masquerading as a 'visual' medium. The visuals look 'cheap'. Most of the 'magical land' sets look like... well... sets... scenes that appear to be shot on greenscreen... well... look like they were shot on greenscreen... there were 'wyrd' shots which looked 'hazed', blacks that never actually were black... etc...

I was 'stunned'... in the bad sense... then I looked up on IMDB and saw according to the 'tech specs' listed, that the show was shot with an Arri Alexa... So given the examples of theatrical movie making using the Alexa... I can only conclude the production 'wanted' the 'crappy look'.

I have seen the HBO and Starz offerings for their productions, and despite being for 'Cable TV', they are worlds apart even for 'production values'.

One observation is that the Cable productions I think are fewer episodes, so each episode seems to benefit by having both more time and money, given the productions cost 'about the same'...

Another observation is... when people 'praise' TV, I can only thing they are referring to these higher production valued Cable TV series, and not the Broadcast TV series... (The other Broadcast TV series I've watched recently was "Switched at Birth"(2011) the first year. Same sort of complaints about dialog, and because of the type of series, the production values were 'ok'... just the usual 'studio' based production...)
 
My wife has been watching this. I watched the first episode with her because the premise is really interesting. In 5 minutes I was turned off. "I hate the way this looks and is acted," I said to her. I watched the most recent episode the other night because I was holding our infant son and I couldn't reach the remote. Nothing had changed. I was very disappointed in it. The logic in on of the scenes baffled me and I almost Hulked out.
 
It's not great but it's not terrible. I watch it with my GF, it's one our 'shows'. There are scenes, acting, dialogue and especially fight scenes that make me cringe, but the over-all creativity of the show makes up for it (at least for me). It's enough to keep me interested and gives us a show to watch together.

I mean it's no Walking Dead, or BSG, or any of these other great shows, but it's entertaining. Seems to be more female oriented though.

Now if you want to talk bad shows, Revolution is by far one of the worse on TV right now. I'm a post-apocalypse fan so I'm trying to give it a chance, but it's painful. Not only does it have all the problems once upon a time has, but it's more so, and on top of that the story is by far one of the most cliched and predictable I've ever seen. It's just lazy writing all around. I've hit my head several times because I was praying the scene wouldn't end the way I thought it would, but it did. Then there are the things that just make no sense, like wasting your entire platoon to make a sniper run out of bullets. Sure he's 'bad' but it just doesn't make sense! Lazy lazy lazy...
 
Jon Starr said:
It's not great but it's not terrible. I watch it with my GF, it's one our 'shows'. There are scenes, acting, dialogue and especially fight scenes that make me cringe, but the over-all creativity of the show makes up for it (at least for me). It's enough to keep me interested and gives us a show to watch together.

I mean it's no Walking Dead, or BSG, or any of these other great shows, but it's entertaining. Seems to be more female oriented though.

Now if you want to talk bad shows, Revolution is by far one of the worse on TV right now. I'm a post-apocalypse fan so I'm trying to give it a chance, but it's painful. Not only does it have all the problems once upon a time has, but it's more so, and on top of that the story is by far one of the most cliched and predictable I've ever seen. It's just lazy writing all around. I've hit my head several times because I was praying the scene wouldn't end the way I thought it would, but it did. Then there are the things that just make no sense, like wasting your entire platoon to make a sniper run out of bullets. Sure he's 'bad' but it just doesn't make sense! Lazy lazy lazy...
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I think for the moment... "Once Upon a Time..."... will be my only Broadcast TV show I'll watch this year... the method has been to buy the DVD/BD disk package, and then watch it a marathon... the other thing that does really 'get me' about the DVD/BD version, is they could just as well not 'black' the screen when the commercials 'would have happened', they could have just straight cut to the next scene...
 
I know a lot of people that watch the show and really like it. I personally couldn't get into it, but that's unsurprising because it is extremely rare these days for me to get into a show that is not on AMC, HBO, or british television. TV has changed so much in the past decade, but the major networks seem to be lagging behind.
 
jghenderson said:
I know a lot of people that watch the show and really like it. I personally couldn't get into it, but that's unsurprising because it is extremely rare these days for me to get into a show that is not on AMC, HBO, or british television. TV has changed so much in the past decade, but the major networks seem to be lagging behind.
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The Wife and I liked the Premise, but the production 'values' are totally lacking relative to what we are use to seeing, especially when compared to AMC's "Mad Men", and the various HBO series, such as "Game of Thrones"(*). When I did watch Broadcast TV 'lots'... "Star Trek" (ancient generation...) and even in my enthusiasm for the show, I realized that by the second season it had degraded into a 'monster of the week' type program. "Star Trek" being canceled didn't bother me that much because by then I had stopped watching TV regularly... and had developed friendships with people working in movie houses and got 'gratis' access to watching movies...

*Despite it being shot on lots of 'sets', etc. I think "Game of Thrones" does a reasonable balance between $200M 2 hour movie, and a 10-12 episode series, at some what less production costs... The $79.00 bux for the BD second season preorder price at Amazon doesn't thrill me though...
 
Agreed. Game of Thrones is probably one of the more movie quality shows out there right now. Quite extraordinary considering what TV fantasy usually is.
 
i haven't seen this show, haven't even heard of it.

I too feel broadcast is a vast wasteland with the occasional exceptions (both now and at earlier times).
Buy discs of series??? About as likely as watch live, meaning no way.

I do, however, rent Netflix DVD/BD of a few broadcast series... like 3 so far this century, I think...

House MD just ended its broadcast run earlier this year, and my wife and I are on the next-to-last disc (we watch these shows together).
House (the character) is brilliant, eccentric and selfish- a nihilist, misanthropic medical genius. Easily the most original "Medical Drama" ever. Dark comedy (the best kind), too.

Pushing Daisies- I have to agree with Wiki:
Touted as a "forensic fairy tale", the series is known for its unique visual style, quirky characters, and fast-paced dialogue. Yes, yes and yes.
I don't know what Once Upon's style is, but Pushing Daisies' surreal sets and color palette reminds me of something out of Pee Wee's Playhouse...

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Loved the show- original, lots of fun, and Kristen Chenoweth is hot! We watched this on DVD, I imagine BD would be eye popping! :shocked:


Arrested Development- yet another "Dysfunctional Family Fox Comedy" but the best one since... The Simpsons (which I still watch here and there, now that I think about it...)
A really, really screwed up family. And hilarious!

And yeah, the dips to black, musical crescendos and facial CUs between segments are annoying, but probably not as much as the story peaking, then picking back up, but whatya gonna do??? It's TV...
 
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