Tuesday, September 18, 2007 at 9:04 am
Emmygate: The Morning After the Morning After
I promise this will be my last post about Sally Fieldgate, because I have no desire to turn the former Flying Nun into freaking Aung San Suu Kyi over one discombobulated podium rant at the Emmys. But the New York Times has a nice postmortem about Fox's night of the itchy dump-button finger. The most interesting bit has nothing to do with the bleeping of Field's remarks but rather, presenter Ray Romano's:
Mr. Romano was censored when he made a joke about his former television wife — Patricia Heaton, his co-star on “Everybody Loves Raymond†— and her new character’s love affair with Kelsey Grammer’s character on “Back to You,†a Fox series that is to have its premiere this week. In doing so, Mr. Romano ignored Fox’s plea to television critics not to reveal the characters’ back story before the series’s broadcast.
Mmmyeah. Because nobody was going to see that mindblowing plot twist coming. I'll have a review of Back to You later, but as far as the show's originality is concerned, that's pretty much all the review you need.
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About Tuned In
James Poniewozik writes TIME magazine's Tuned In column, about pop culture and society. Tuned In, the blog version, is about the stuff we used to call "TV," whether it's in your living room, on your computer or -- once the networks figure out the technology and line up the advertisers -- in your dreams themselves. Read more
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Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 11:21 am
I'm curious. How common are instructions/requests to not reveal plot twists? Are they only about things revealed toward the end of an episode or are they more restrictive? And how often do you ignore these "pleas"?
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 11:42 am
It's not rare, and they're generally superfluous. Most critics don't like spoilers (before a show airs) any more than anyone else. You're not going to preview the first episode of Mad Men saying that Don Draper's married, whether AMC asks you to or not. (Even though it was a fairly lame twist.) But if you're the sort of writer who's inclined to spoil, you'll do it anyway.
Regardless, it's not like there's any professional or ethical obligation not to reveal information that's been given to you by a subject. The obligation is more about deciding what serves your readers and what ruins things for them. But you work for the readers, not for the networks nor the producers.