By the way, while I’m thinking about this. If all new feature movies were suddenly to disappear, I don’t think I would care that much. They are almost always a gamble that I lose in terms of enjoyability. TV series, on the other hand, seem much more reliably worth the time spent watching them (on DVD without commercials, of course). I don’t think this was true as often a decade ago, but today I think there is a lot more evidence of writer and producers really trying to come up with something that might count as quality.
One thing is that TV just has so much more time to develop characters and plots (assuming the show doesn’t get cancelled after, like, four episodes or something). Instead of two hours to set up a murder, introduce characters, and solve the crime, a show like Veronica Mars has 18 hours. Which allows for more detail and more complexity, as well as more character-building.
But I also think that it depends on where you look for movies. I’ve seen some extremely good movies in the last year, but almost none of them were big Hollywood releases. I don’t know…there’s a large dichotomy between mainstream and independent film that isn’t mirrored on TV. You could set network TV against cable TV, but even then, it’s not the same situation as film has. Even network TV seems to often have more variety of programming than mainstream Hollywood does. Who would expect to see America’s Next Top Model in a double-billing with Veronica Mars, if they were movies?
Hubby and I have evolved to that position as well. . . Plot/character nuances just are more developed in serials these days than in movies.
And with the advent of Netflix. . . Well, let’s just say Hubby took a parttime job at Blockbuster when we were watching through the Twin Peaks video tapes. . .
Twin Peaks! Jennifer and I tried to watch that but weren’t sure what to think.
For one thing, season came to us without the show’s pilot.
Should we go back and try again?