Author: tarinig

I highly doubt that anyone in this class has watched the recently aired Netflix special, The Roast of Tom Brady. Hell, as of yesterday, I hadn’t even watched the recently aired Netflix special, The Roast of Tom Brady. But I was scrolling through different streaming services today trying to jog my brain because I couldn’t think of what to write about for this post and somehow this is where we ended up. Unfortunately. 

I’m really not trying to be the fun police here but I must say this shit suuuuuuuucked. The roasts delivered by non-comedians were painful but even some of the professional funny people failed to impress. In large part because the material was so redundant. There are only so many things you can make fun of a man for, so it just felt like a competition to see who could make the edgiest joke about Tom Brady’s divorce. 

And it went on for 3 hours. I only watched parts but I genuinely can not imagine sitting down for the full runtime just to watch a bunch of rich, famous people make fun of other rich, famous people and they’re all just laughing at each other because they’re so rich and famous that none of it matters. For 3. WHOLE. HOURS. This is what we’re platforming, this is what television looks like I guess. I suppose there’s potential catharsis in seeing said rich and famous people get torn apart- even if it’s just for show- but I just could not be bothered. 

Apparently plenty of others could be, though, because 2 million people watched this the day that it aired! And who knows how many have watched it since. I’m not surprised, just disappointed. Again, I’m not trying to sound holier than thou here but given that we live in an online world where a lot of people would rather tell each other to go kill themselves than engage in productive discourse, I can see why this was a hit. 

Celebrity roasts are supposed to be scathing (and I usually love me some edgy humor) but this felt like they were being provocative for provocation’s sake. As if The Roast of Tom Brady was designed to trend on Twitter. It worked, of course; all the news headlines about it are just reacting to this inflammatory joke or that extreme reaction. 

There’s a place for this kind of content and I don’t begrudge anyone for enjoying it. It’s just a Netflix special. I’m also not saying this is the absolute state of post-network television and the internet, but it is a pretty grim snapshot if you ask me.

In my last post, I dared to suggest that Survivor was, in fact, not garbage. Today, I’m here to talk about another underappreciated TV masterpiece: Studio Fortiche and Riot Games’ brilliant Netflix show, Arcane. 

Sci-fi/fantasy? Check. Based on a video game? Check. Animated? Check. At a glance, the show is practically on its hands and knees begging boring people not to take it seriously. But unlike with Survivor, I don’t actually need to defend Arcane’s quality because every real human being who’s watched the show understands it to be phenomenal. 

Instead, I want to talk about why, despite Arcane’s irrefutable greatness, the show isn’t as popular as it deserves to be. Arcane should have been the next Game of Thrones; a lot of people who actually watched it even favorably compared the two. Both impeccably written shows feature a mature ensemble cast and tell a sprawling, political narrative set in a violent fantasy world. Analogous genres aside, there are of course differences between the two shows, but I refuse to believe that the massive disparity in popularity between the two is because GoT happens to have more naked people; I think it’s more likely because Arcane happens to be animated. 

Animation is still in such a weird place because- in a lot of ways- it’s treated like a genre, not a medium. Despite the fact that people have been making mature, animated works for decades, the medium seems perpetually relegated to G-rated status in the eyes of not only the general public but many critics as well. It’s common knowledge that any animated feature that doesn’t look, smell, and taste like a Disney or Pixar film is doomed once the awards season rolls around. Source: The Wind Rises losing to Frozen at the 2013 Oscars (kill me). And things aren’t much better in the realm of TV animation. Beyond programming targeted at kids, adult comedy is really the only other genre with an established place in the mainstream. 

Case in point, when Arcane deservedly won the award for “Outstanding Animated Program” at the 2022 Emmys, it did so by beating The Simpsons, Rick & Morty, and Bob’s Burgers. Now I’m not here to pass judgment on the depth or quality of the other nominees, but it shouldn’t have taken an entire panel of judges to recognize that one of those things was not like the others. There are exceptions, but the point is that the vast majority of popular animated television shows are defined by a consistent, limited set of generic terms- not to mention comparably similar, 2D animation styles. As creators, consumers, and critics we have collectively divined a self-fulfilling prophecy that restricts the types of stories allowed to be told through animation. Which is a shame, because as Arcane convincingly proves, the medium is capable of so much more. 

Arcane is a gem but that almost doesn’t matter because it currently sits at a medium/genre crossroads that frankly doesn’t exist yet; the show is masterfully pushing too many envelopes for its own good. I say almost, though, because I have faith that things will change. In the years since Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse dropped there’s been an uptick in mature animated films with unique art styles finding commercial success. Even if Arcane didn’t originally release to Marvel levels of cacophonous fanfare, I truly believe that it has the potential to become a similarly trailblazing piece of media. People just need to spot the damn flame. 

Even having set such a high bar for itself, I’m optimistic that future installments of Arcane will be incredible. And if the show continues to deliver, hopefully more people will start to take notice. Speaking of which, with the second season slated to drop later this year, there has never been a better time to check out Arcane. So if a violent, sci-fi/fantasy, political drama that happens to be animated sounds like your special stew, then give the show a try. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Although here’s hoping that won’t be the case forever. 

Now you may be wondering: why would such a clairvoyant, handsome viewer like myself sit through more than 20 seasons of a show like Survivor? For love, dear reader. For love. While I can’t claim to have ever auditioned for the show (or taken swim lessons to prepare for it), I do actually adore Survivor.  

“But it’s not even that real,” you say. You only see a fraction of what happens- the stuff the people making the show want you to see,” you feebly protest. 

Exactly. 

Don’t get me wrong I’ve had plenty of fun binging Survivor with friends and just laughing at the silly people in the TV show being horrible to each other. But I genuinely believe that the show is a fascinatingly nuanced work of creative brilliance. For me, watching Survivor is an intensely negotiated exercise in piecing together fragments of truth to make inferences about where the show is headed and who will eventually win. It’s a whodunnit. And like any good mystery, it still works even once you’ve peeked behind the curtain. 

Because it’s true: there’s so much that happens during those 39 (or 26, sigh) days that you as a viewer never see. But that means that what you do see is there for a reason. Part of the show’s core appeal is indeed the illusion that you’re watching real people do real things. But really, when you watch a season or even an episode of Survivor you’re engaging with a version of reality that those making the show have intentionally crafted for the sake of narrative. When you consider that- for any given season- Survivor’s editors sift through hundreds of hours of real, random footage and piece it all together into something coherent, you start to recognize Survivor for the creative undertaking that it truly is. And given that the brilliant minds behind the show have been performing this feat for 25 years across 46 seasons, you can bet they’re fucking good at it. 

Like anything airing on television, Survivor needs you to keep watching it. The methods by which it achieves this on an episode-to-episode basis or even within a single episode’s runtime are pretty straightforward: cutting to commercial break on a cliffhanger, showing teasers of next week’s juicy action at the end of every episode, etc, etc- you’ve seen it all before. But it’s through careful cultivation, of the personalities and arcs of contestants who go the distance- especially the eventual winner- that Survivor works its real magic. 

After all, any good story needs a satisfying conclusion. If you the viewer invested in the narratives of season after season of Survivor only to be continually subjected to winners who were shown to be unlikeable people or undeserving contestants, you’d probably get fed up and drop the show. The game’s mechanics work to circumvent this outcome to an extent, but it’s the editors’ responsibility to make you root for, like, or at the very least understand the winning contestant and their gameplay enough to be satisfied when they inevitably bring home the million. 

Watching Survivor with this understanding transforms the way you interpret literally every on-screen interaction in literally every scene; it becomes a constant game of analysis that involves interpreting your own readings of everything that happens throughout the season to predict its outcome. 

I will grant that the average Survivor viewer is probably not quite as neurotic as yours truly. After all, millions of people still tune in every week to watch the show and I can’t imagine they’ve all read Stuart Hall’s chapter on encoding and decoding. But I think if a piece of art can be enjoyed at such wildly varying levels of engagement, that has to count for something. Some reality TV may be trash. Survivor, however, is good trash.