While Nikki Finke is still in a tizzy about how CBS’s new show Kid Nation is going to cause the downfall of CBS and its board, the New York Times went ahead and figured out that when it comes down to it, viewers are tuning in just to spy in on interpersonal relationships. The interpersonal relationships of 10 year olds, sure, but interpersonal relationships nonetheless.
That’s something important to keep in mind. Survivor wasn’t really about the challenges, it was about Susan ranting about how she hoped to come across a dying Kelly in the desert. NBC knows this too - with the upcoming revamp of American Gladiators, they’re going to be focusing more on the competitors backstories and interactions with the Gladiators themselves.
It’s about making these real life people into characters. The success of shows like these relies on the ability of its producers to influence participants into the character roles and traits that have worked so well in the past.
One more note - Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe described the Kid Nation child labor controversy that has been in the news over the past month or two as “anti-hype,” which couldn’t be further from the truth. Instead, CBS has proved a wise practitioner of “There’s no such thing as bad press,” just so long as everything is technically legal.
Photo from CBS via the NYTimes article. I don’t understand the whole western theme of the show, I would’ve preferred a Rome motif - you know, “Kid Empire.”
While hanging around Soup2Nuts (the most excellent animation studio behind Home Movies and Dr. Katz) this summer, I saw the desperate need for a redesign of their website, which at the time consisted solely of their reels and contact information. As somebody at the company said, “It looks like we’re out of business.”
Since they have plans for a larger site in the future, my version still bears an “Under Construction” banner, but I think the site has a nice clean aesthetic and is mostly standards adherant (it could have been more so, but I didn’t feel like going back to fix a couple things).
Feel free to check out the trailer for Soup2Nuts’ upcoming PBS Kids series WordGirl while you’re there - the show’s great, and features, among others, the voice talents of Patton Oswalt, Jeffrey Tambor, and a hilarious turn by Chris Parnell as the show’s narrator.
More pics after the jump.
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Everyone has their own set of little anecdotes - cocktail party patter, clever one-liners and quips that can be recycled over and over, to be replaced seasonally. Personal talking points, in a way.
The unnamed protagonist of Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance has one of these talking points that he’s particularly proud of, which he brings up again and again when asked about his job as a freelance writer.
Well, somebody’s got to write these things. And the same can be said for collecting garbage and shoveling snow. It doesn’t matter whether you like it or not, a job’s a job.
For three and a half years, I’d been making this kind of contribution to society. Shoveling snow. You know, cultural snow.
That the narrator so transparently recycles the “cultural snow” line was terribly endearing to me. It reinforces the down to earth and surprisingly accessible nature of Murakami’s protagonists - despite the often bizarre circumstances they find themselves in, they’re really pretty normal, slightly disaffected, people. Much like Kurt Vonnegut, Murakami excels when it comes to the atmospheric internal monologue.
What happens in the book? The loner narrator is searching for a lost love. More mysteries are uncovered than solved. Odd, supernatural things occur, but are presented as fairly unremarkable. More than anything, it’s about how nice it can be when confused, lonely people fall into serendipitous friendships, and manage to muster the strength to take these relationships at face value and simply enjoy them.
Dance Dance Dance: ****/5
Up next: Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
Click here for the index of past reviews.
