(no subject)

[avevale_intelligencer]

So, American Gothic. The series, that is, not the painting or the Bloch novel or any of the other things that bear that name.

I remember watching it when it came on TV, and being perplexed towards the end of the run, because the story arc came to its climax over three powerful episodes, and then suddenly the series seemed to slip backwards into standard story-of-the-weekishness, with a lot of the arc changes reset, and petered out after another four episodes leaving me at least confused and unhappy with it.

We've just watched it on disc, and having looked it up on the net I discover that the order the episodes were shown in was (possibly deliberately) messed up: two episodes weren't shown at all in America, and two others were shown out of sequence after the arc had finished. Given that they contained elements which were essential to said arc (e.g. one character had seemed to go instantly from hating another to being in lust with hir, another had undergone a complete moral turnaround) it's hard to see what purpose this messing around could possibly have served, other than to disorient and confuse the audience so that ratings would drop and a cancellation could be justified. (This is probably me being paranoid again and attributing to malice what is perfectly well explained by sheer indifference. The fact that when it comes to telly studios and networks I don't distinguish between indifference and malice is doubtless grossly unfair of me.)

It was a good series, well acted and on the whole well written*, with some funny moments and some shocking ones, and it would have made so much more sense and been so much more satisfying if they had shown the damn episodes in the right order. It might even have made it to a second season.

*Even without the arc disruption, there are moments when some of the characters seem to be acting strangely out of, erm, character, but subsequent seasons might have revealed reasons for that.

Comments

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

I always thought it was a great show and regretted that it never got a second season. I remember tracking down a book that covered the sherif as a teenager in a power struggle with his father for control of the town. I might have to go digging to see if there were any more books written.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

The irritating thing is that the DVD set has the episodes in the order they were shown, not the order they were supposed to be shown. I'll have to remember so that next time we do a marathon I can chop and change so they run in the right order.

I only found one book ("Family") so I expect that's it. I was looking for a book about the show, but no luck.