Sunday, September 5, 2010
5:50 AM. Thinking, for some reason, of “The Search For Spock” and the TV episodes of Star Trek that I have been watching (the complete set of VCRs, the gift of a friend uncluttering so as to be able to accumulate new clutter, as do we all). Watching so many TV shows of the same program, essentially one after another, makes so clear how the formula runs, and shows the central flaw in it as drama. If, every time it’s time for a commercial, it looks like it’s curtains for Kirk or Spock or the Enterprise — in order to build enough suspense to force or entice the audience to sit through the commercials and not change channels — and then of course it turns out to be (big surprise) not curtains after all…