David Minor Post/Comment #2

I found Michael Hackman’s comparison of “quality television” to a “finely crafted watch” really useful. He writes that “our pleasure in the operational aesthetic doesn’t come simply from observing the workings of a finely crafted watch, but from a sense that the product of its machinery will be something more broadly meaningful – it tells us what time it is. This is, essentially, a cultural operation, not an aesthetic one.” In other words, it’s the fusion of the narratively unfamiliar (innovative storytelling) with the emotionally familiar (melodrama, relationships, love triangles, etc) that elevates certain shows to the designation of ‘quality tv’. It’s a delicate balancing act because neither element can really stand by itself – the first season of Westworld, for example, was lauded for its incredible narrative structure and the highly emotional stories of the humanoid robots (hosts) in the park. In later seasons, I felt like the writers leaned too heavily into the more intellectual/head-y themes of consciousness and artificial intelligence and designed plot-lines that were clever but so much so that it led to confusion in terms of the overall storyline and the interiority of the characters.