a curated selection of thoughts collected within a 1 gb limit
in the digital age of television, there’s been a steady rise of the binge format. (no) thanks to netflix, it’s all the more easier to just dump everything into a pile and expect viewers to watch 12 hours of an entire season in a day. and while that may be the case, it doesn’t look like this binge format is working long term. again, netflix does this exact thing. but with their catalog being as ginormous as it is, it’s no surprise when the hype starts dying and their new pride and joy has to be put down…that and their terrible marketing. when you start to overstimulate your audience, it's no wonder why they eventually stop paying attention.
it seems as though the most tried-and-true method is just sprinkling out each episode week by week. disney+ prides itself off of doing this from the minute they were even born. but with this practice, they’ve also been doing something else entirely: the two-episode premiere.
it’s not a new thing. all the 11-minute cartoons do this exact thing as well, albeit because they kinda have to. but in the world of streaming, the binge format needed something else eventually. you want people talking and first impressions are everything. you need trailers, posters, maybe talk about the cast if it’s that important, and now you really gotta seal the deal with your fancy new pilot. so that’s it, right? you got everything down and people are gonna stay? don’t even test my patience. all you did was introduce the main formula. the question is, what are you gonna do with it?
this is the kind of thing i’ve been thinking about for quite a bit, but i never had the right way of articulating my feelings. that was the case, but then i saw the premiere of this new comedy central cartoon called digman. i heard about it, i’ve seen what it looked like, and i can’t go five minutes without comedy central's loud ass commercials yelling at me about it. so what is it?
digman is the brainchild of neil campbell and andy samburg, both producers on brooklyn nine nine. it follows the adventures of rip digman (andy samburg), who previously retired from being an archeologist, or arky as it’s professionally called, after the tragic death of his late wife. it also doesn’t help that the person who betrayed him, zane troy (guz khan), is now way more successful than him. he’s sort of a cliched elon musk type, but without the apartheid money. anyway, together with his trusty assistant arky, saltine (mitra jouhari), and skilled pilot, swooper (tim robinson), they go on wacky adventures finding a bunch of cool stuff. oh yeah, and there’s a funny animal who does drugs. by the way, if you recognize jouhari’s name, she’s one of the three busy debras on adult swim. apparently, she’s also recasted as cleopatra in the new clone high. so that’s something to look forward to as well. oh and as for guz khan, he plays ivan in HBO max’s our flag meets death.
it’s the typical saturday morning cartoon formula, but with a bit more wacky adult humor. it’s not too raunchy, but it’s mature enough to keep up a 14 rating. although, it does have a habit of just saying things. you know what i mean? like, some of the dialogue you can tell was written to BE funny instead of it being naturally funny. let me know if that makes sense so i can go home. in general, you can tell the pacing is too fast and loose. if this were less talkative and took some time to calm down, maybe i’d like it better. but as it stands, it's totally scuffed. is this a new thing with some of these adult cartoons? i know rick and morty is super popular, but the writing style isn't something to take notes from. i mean, they also got that habit of just saying things at a million miles per second. it's not a good look.
also, this is more of a nitpick, but the voice mixing is kinda crap. you’ll notice it more if you’re really into video editing, but some lines tend to overlap each other and it just doesn’t sound that natural. it just can’t keep up.
most of these problems are intensified in the first episode, i think. it hasn’t quite found its footing at this point, so naturally it wants to do a lot of everything. make this another half-hour and it would probably take some more time to develop. i would ignore it, but this damn thing has a plot. with cliffhangers. you can understand it on its own, but the overarching story is there. i see that they wanna do something they're deeply passionate about. that's why they keep banging on about it.
however, the second episode has done a better job with pacing. the voice mixing is still a problem that pisses me off (and only me), but the writing in general feels tighter and less frantic. maybe some jokes can be cut down, but it's getting somewhere. it just goes to show that if you take the time to flesh something out, it could actually work. because in the end, this is a pretty alright cartoon. the action is good, the character dynamics are super fun, and the art isn’t even that bad. the character designs might look a little derivative and sterile for some people, but i don’t have a problem with it. the animation isn’t the greatest either, yet it’s far from ugly. last time, i compared this art style to something like collegehumor's bearshark or perhaps a cheaper looking harry partridge cartoon. again, please let me know if that's an insult.
not just that, but the designs themselves are good at being instantly recognizable. it’s not enough for me to say, “oh, saltine looks cute.” of course she does. the point is that there’s something to each character where you’d know who they are. i brought this up in my big city greens retrospective as well, and it kinda does the same thing. presentation is a key component to animation. besides, it’s definitely better than fairview.
okay, that’s not exactly a good comparison. fairview is just incompetent all around. i gave that one episode and it was genuinely one of the worst premieres i had ever seen on cable. when the second episode came on and pulled the exact same punches, i immediately gave up. and that’s what makes the second episode worth a damn. you wanna put me through your pretty light show? be more specific. you fool me once, you can’t fool me again. if a premiere is not that but redeems itself the next time, i’ll forgive it. but when it annoys me the second time in a row, i can smell what the rest of it is gonna be.
heads up: this is what i meant earlier. i warned you, didn't i?
but some shows do perfectly fine from the get-go. a key example i’d like to point out is HBO’s barry. you think this would be so hard from all that i've written, but the pilot episode is a prime example of how to get things started. we know barry berkman is a hitman who wants a better purpose for his life, so he finds that purpose by complete accident during his mission. no spoilers, but it establishes everything we need to know in thirty minutes. we know there's an underlying threat, we know this is all going to implode at some point, and we especially know that something bad is going to happen. that's exciting! it leaves you wanting more. it leaves you wondering where this is going next. and the second episode rewards the viewer for that anticipation and buildup. we know everything at this point, so how are things gonna play out? in the case of barry, pretty well. in the case of barry the character, let's just say this last season better go out with a bang.
hang on a doggone minute. if barry's second outing made things better and digman's made it more tolerable, what does that say for the second episode in general? does it exist to build off a show's mythos or does it serve to improve its structure? perhaps a show really does need time to develop, putting emphasis on that further development in the second episode.
take undone, for example, a prime video series that primarily uses rotoscope animation to explores topics like schizophrenia and such. the first episode focuses on our main character, alma, and what she’s going through in her life. she’s living this monotonous slog of a life; a loop that she can’t get out of. we see in the beginning that she gets into a car crash after seeing a vision, then we get to know her a bit, and then we build up back to that crash. the end! not the best pilot episode, but that’s what a half hour does for ya.
but the second episode is what elevates these themes. we know the reality in which alma is going through already. now let’s see what happens when we promptly take it away from her. that’s development right there. but should it be smushed into the second episode? i feel that the pilot does a good job in introducing our characters, but it’s kind of a slow burner and it doesn’t introduce anything central. would it work better perhaps if they combined both episodes into an hour long episode? can you develop a story better in an hour than you could in half that time?
truth be told, if you're just starting out your telly show, your first outing is only as good as it is when you're finally done with it. with the rest of the show, the pilot is going to differ in quality by comparison. at that point, you're just glad to be making it at all. but later down the line, you'll only improve with further practice, or perhaps get worse as this thing becomes a slog to work with.
that is the essence of the second episode; developing this idea you want to introduce and then seeing it in motion. anime does this all the time, now that i think about it. the first episode is most likely gonna focus on introducing this big new world ahead of us before eventually pulling out the stops the next time around. space cobra, for example, had to go through this whole origin story before we could go on any wacky adventures. even then, chainsaw man does it, dragon ball does it, one piece practically lives off of doing it, and all the self-contained anime like lupin iii part 2 and cowboy bebop tend to do it. granted, bebop gradually develops everything. they don’t even get the whole cast together until episode 9 or so. but the bebop formula is still there. it’s not like the second episode has to determine every little thing. it just has to help the show along the way. how else will it convince you before it jumps to the third?
and you know what? that’s exactly what digman did.
so the third episode is a strange case. the voice mixing is still a big problem, but the pacing is actually getting better. it might be the funniest episode by far. but stranger than that, this one has a full-length intro. yeah, three episodes in and we finally have a proper opening with unique animation. i really don’t get it. it’s hitting the right notes, but the music sheet is still upside down. there’s clear problems that need addressing here. i mean, they don’t even play around with the funny animal who, mind you, does drugs. if you wanna introduce a gimmick that isn’t funny, at least try to convince me that it is.
what about shows that get worse as they go along? i've heard from multiple people about how the mandalorian has gotten stale or uneventful or whatever you call it. is that indictive of how bad a show's gotten or how bad the show is? series like game of thrones and dexter nowadays can't be brought up in discussion without at least a couple people bringing up how bad their endings were. both shows have risen from the ashes for sure, but there's still that sourness in some viewers' throats that you just can't get out. for some shows, that dip in quality is inevitable, no matter how big or small.
for digman (cool transition), it was fairly small. the fourth episode had some nice little character moments, but overall it was just okay. the fifth episode, however, might actually be my favorite right now. it's like everything good about it rolled up into a nice burrito. this is actually the only episode that i wanna describe right now. basically, amelia earhart has a robot arm and takes charge of a plane that's also a high society of other pilots. she passes the mantle onto the aforementioned swooper, who's been dealing with family struggles on his own time. see, this is what i'm talking about. if you take time to gradually flesh out your ideas, you could have something cool! you've introduced the main ideas and made sense of them in two episodes. now the rest of the season is up to-
hey, wait a minute. didn't this thing have a plot? yeah, i remember now. there was an episode where it ended on one of the characters picking up some elusive artifact. screw the second episode, what are this show's standards exactly? it goes back to most of the established threads, like rip's whole thing with his wife dying, but there's a big, juicy threat that we seem to be ignoring right now. maybe it's a bad time to judge it so early, but i'm already this invested with it that i don't actually care at the moment.
but alas, i'm forgetting that i live in a glass house. what you just saw me doing was derail the entire point of this smorgasbord you call an article. whatever you create is gonna start out promising, but you need to keep it under control once you roped in enough people. of course the second outing doesn't automatically determine how good something is.
so what is it good for? well, let's recap. the first episode is set in stone so that everything is introduced in an orderly fashion. some of them do it perfectly, others don't have the time or patience to do so. in the second episode, that's when you show these chumps how this formula is gonna work from now on. it's not there to fix what's broken, but rather to build off of the foundation of what may or may not be broken. perhaps that why the two-episode premiere is so common nowadays. even this new final season of barry just opened with a double whammy premiere, and it only took one of them to get it back together. the second episode is just icing on that sweet cake.
as of today, it's been a year since i started coding this website together. and since then, i've done at least a dozen articles. i'm immensely proud of all that i've written for it, but i'd like to think that i've gotten better with time and practice. at first, you don't know the process. then, you start to get the hang of things. eventually, you have everything figured out and you're all set for the time being. not every article's gonna outdo my last, but it should always at least outdo my first. i used to think about posting these weekly, then every two weeks, then three, and now i'm doing these longer ones every once or twice a month. i wouldn't be doing it like this if not for me doing it so many times.
and apparently, i still have trouble with spelling.
in the end, a project is only as good as it is in the long run. a bad episode of a great show could do a lot of damage if it isn't careful. but a good episode of a bad show could perhaps set the gold standard that turns bad to okay to good to really good. and in my humble opinion, digman really has a lot going for it. it's prone to being too fast at times, but it has more meat in its bones than one might realize. the character dynamics are great, the plots are fun, and it's pretty funny as well.
it needs work, though. i'm happy to see where it's going, but it's so close to true greatness that i just wanna run up to whoever's making this show and tell them to stop losing the plot and get on with it. maybe they'll prove me wrong by the season finale, but i hope there's more to it than that. comedy central can take any cartoon that isn't south park and melt it away like it never happened. and if that happens to digman, it'll be the biggest missed opportunity on their part. adult animation is already severly undermarketed as it is, since the best way of hearing about a show is word-of-mouth. there's already this new workplace cartoon called fired on mars on HBO max, and there's a lot going for it in terms of animation and storytelling. it's a little mismarketed as a comedy, so maybe come in to expect something else. coincidentally, it's the latest show to premiere with two episodes in a row, with new ones coming out weekly. so there you have it. disney's doing it, HBO is doing it, and you should do it too. if you're not satisfied with a TV show after one episode, give it one more shot. if it still doesn't rope you in, then so be it. as long as it's not fairview.