Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Great Show...Sad to see it Go...but it had to. ; (

As a past fan of Flashforward (FF) I was intrigued by the exact same reason that Lesage wrote about in Pacing and Script. FF used many of the same pacing and script elements that previous television shows did, "such as Lost and Heroes" (Lesage, 2009) and created a more finite time-expiring show. There was an end date to this film and like Lost there were flashbacks that gave the viewer character background and like Heroes there were alternate realities, or flashforwards, that added onto character 'foreground[?]' that gave us more information on the future as well. The show gave us online communities to figure out mosaic and see if our thoughts linked up with other peoples. It was a created show but just how Lesage go tired of Mark Benfords poor acting and sappy dialogue the show got to be drawn out and its slow pacing, minimal action, and drawn out plot lines were not enough to secure it a second season.

Lesage says that, "I am intrigued that the series is training me in proper fan cult behavior" (Lesage, 2009). After being a Lost and Heroes fan I was up for the challenge but seriously the challenge wasn't challenging. Heroes allowed me a leisure participation, I didn't need to go online to figure the backstories but what I could do was watch webisodes of other potential characters that existed, which was awesome...the mailman was the coolest. There were also comments that I could read, that continued the story or gave insights to the characters in the story. It was truly an engaging story on television and online. With Lost I could go online and join communities that provided insights and theories that were pertinent to the themes of the show, because it was so layered with real life 'potential' theories it was cool to see what people that was relevant to the show. However, FF lost steam in this battle I found myself dragging on with the show just because I started watching it and had seen all the episodes. There weren't theories that I wanted to see if they really existed or webisodes that showed other characters in the show. So here's a place where they could have succeeded and failed which could be a potential reason for why FF failed, but it was good show with poor execution.

2 comments:

  1. I watched FF for the first time last night and enjoyed it. My main qualm, as the article also mentions, was that I didn't care for the characters. They weren't immediately relatable or likable. I think their relatability has to do with the way we are introduced to them and to so many of them so quickly. By the time the FF device arrives, their character development appears to be for the mere sake of aiding a narrative gimmick. I think the gimmickyness of the FFs expose the debate of destiny v free will too much, in a way that Lost refuses to do so until much later on in the series. It's almost as if FF took Lost's mysteriousness and cut away all the supposedly extraneous crafting of character. And that was a big mistake that probably had a big role in getting the show canceled. But, as I said before, I enjoyed watching the show yesterday, but just not enough to pine for its continuation.

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  2. I kind of think think that if the failed attempts of viewer engagement had gone differently then maybe these issues could have been fixed (I am addressing both Jamal and Josh). I think that if FF had produced some webisodes similar to Heroes where we saw insight into more characters (perhaps something like "FlashForwards from around the world") or if the mosaic sight included extra content like the profiles of actual show characters then fans might have formed a stronger connection with the characters, the fictional world, and the show itself

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