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Comment by planetjones | Hacker News Reader

It always amazes me that humankind can find enough ideas to produce original content. Sure most of the plots have similar themes but this year I have watched Gotham, west world, daredevil, Jessica jones, the fall and currently designated survivor. Yet I am not bored and each series has something captivating about it. Something will have to give on the financial side I am sure, but perhaps on the creative side there is an infinite supply.

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Putting a tv critic hat on for a second:

I'm surprised to see Designated Survivor listed there, watching it felt like it was yanked from network TV and stuck on netflix. It has frequent recaps, obvious gaps where commercial breaks should be, and the same few ideas hyped through the season.

But I guess that's why netflix works, one person's trash is another person's treasure. We all find something that interests us.

I agree, and I find that show one of the worst written big budget programs I've seen a long time. It is so full of cliche dialog, I had to stop watching after the second episode.

Designated Survivor is a network show, at least in the US.

That explains it, in the UK I thought it was branded as a "netflix original" which surprised me because as I said, it didn't feel like one. I could be wrong and perhaps it was just in the same list but styled as "netflix exclusive".

I'll be sure to check more closely next time I'm logged on.

If you would like a little jade in your viewing experience, read Save The Cat by Blake Snyder. Then go ahead and watch any blockbuster movie with the page open to his beat sheet. Allow around one minute per page, and tick off each step as the movie does.

I have an other interpretation : we just don't need a lot of purely original content. Something slightly different is enough in order not to be boring. Even exactly the same thing is not boring, a lot of people watch films/series more than one time.

The problem with "originality" is that if you dig down deep enough, there's few basic narrative structures, and everything is just their instantiations. I'd say that it's enough for a story to not be an obvious copy of some other story your audience likely seen before, and then your story itself must be good enough so that the setting feels "natural", believable, consistent.

I've basically used t.v. as a substitute for people. Yea--I know it's pathetic, but I've been single most my life. In college, I literally couldn't study without that t.v on. I can't even fall asleep without it on now.

I'd turn it on, and not even know what was on, but lately--there's been some shows that suprised me.

West World is one. As a kid, the movie West World was my favorite movie. Future world was second. I watched those two movies so many times.

I understand this too, as it'sa place where social errors can't happen and we can escape. However, there are ways to undo these habits, which will allow for much more connected IRL life.

You're just more honest or insightful than most people. No sarc, seriously. Given that TV is essentially social simulator for atomized individuals, and we're genetically programmed to enjoy endlessly repeated live and in person interpersonal interactions, Grand-ops claim of infinite creativity is inaccurate because there's almost no creativity on TV at all... Grand op does probably like creativity, for social signalling if nothing else, and likes TV, therefore TV must be creative, if a friend of my friend is also my friend type of logic.

TV is about as creative as my wife as I saying good morning to each other for a couple decades now, its very proper and scripted and we're programmed in our genetics or culture to enjoy that kind of familial tribe repetition, but its a stretch to call it "creative". Likewise watching "The Middle" or something, is equally repetitive and predictable and therefore as a pseudo-social activity its enjoyable.

TV isn't precisely addictive, its fake-socializing. Firefly wasn't merely crack, it was one of your friends getting Fed over by some goon hollywood execs. A series getting cancelled isn't like going cold turkey on drugs, its more like an old friend or family member moving away. Kids who pretend to have fake friends really freak out people in modern culture because your fake friends are supposed to be on channel 12 at 8pm on Mondays, its a huge social mistake for your fake friends not to be on the TV or to be on IRC or in a video game. At least its a mistake right now, culture will likely shift soon enough.

This also hits pro sports BTW. The Green Bay Packers are not my crack dealer, they'd my very large fake extended family / tribemates. That's why if I'm on twitter they better be on twitter with me. Even if the weird alpha/beta nature of our relationship means they do all the action and all the talking, and I do all the passive watching and listening, that tribal affiliation runs strong.

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