scenedance (dot com)

Alias came to a close last night. It had a great run, but I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sentimental. It’s not just this show either (well, it was, any show with Lena Olin will always be outstanding), but all of them.

I’m a huge television guy. Feature films are a wonderful medium, such beauty and imagery can be expressed, but it cannot top good television’s ability to tell an ongoing story. The serial format has me wrapped around its finger. A series ending is something special. This is a medium that is designed to go on, to live another day. The end is almost something surreal. I’m not talking about cancelled or dropped shows either; it’s entirely different (though mourning is deserved for a few of those, as well).

I’m incredibly intense and elite about my television watching. You’ll find nary a reality or procedural series in my lineup. I only start a series if I can watch it from the beginning. If the show is well into its run, I get the dvds. If they dvds aren’t out yet, I use more clandestine methods of acquiring the episodes. I don’t believe in the “oh, I’ll catch a random episode and see what I think” theory. That’s complete garbage, and it does a huge disservice to the series. Television needs to be taken in a whole, not with singular episodes here or there. How do you sense character development or put in perspective the plot without seeing every episode? You can’t. Would you read the second book of a series without reading the first, and then complain that you have no idea what is going on? Of course not. I don’t expect everyone to agree with this belief. It’s just my opinion, but it’s true.