Two of my favorite bloggers on there are Ken Tucker and Doc Jensen. Both are great at writing blogs providing provocative thought to television shows. Being a so-called "Lostie" myself, nothing gets better than Jensen's eight-page, essay-of-a-blog recap on Lost every week. I could write a "I Wish I'd Written That" post on those every week, but I'll spare you the pain of that.
For this entry, I'll go with Ken Tucker's latest blog post: '"30 Rock and 'Parks and Recreation': Poehler opposites, Fey-ry funny: Which show's attitude do you like more?"
For my first excerpt, I'm going with the title of the blog post. I know it seems like a cop out picking a title as an excerpt to decipher awesomeness, but come on, that title is riddled with too much awesomeness to just not talk about it.
First off, I know the title seems pretty lengthy; But, in the world of blogging, the title reigns supreme. The title of your blog post can make or break what kind of readership it's going to receive. Sometimes you just have to go with a long title to get the point across to why the reader should want to click on the title.
This title is very clever, playing off the names of the two stars of each show, Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. Having some wordplay is definitely going to get readers to investigate further and check out the article.
The other reason why the title is good? It addresses the reader and asks a question. The internet is full of people whom think they are smarter than everyone else, so therefore their opinion is the right one. These people will click on titles like that to just state their counterpoint to whatever the author has to say.
Excerpt two:
30 Rock is, like its title, very “New York,” granite-tough. Even when Fey isn’t onscreen, her comic tone — cutting; ruthlessness wearing the mask of whimsy — slices through most scenes, particularly anything involving Alec Baldwin’s Jack and his business dealings. It’s kind of amazing to me that Fey gets away with making such fierce fun of NBC corporate masters like GE and now Comcast/Xfinity, aka, Kabletown
This is why I like Tucker: his breakdowns of sitcoms. Anyone can breakdown a drama. Dramas are taken seriously and usually have more of a plot than a sitcom. People watch sitcoms to just laugh and usually not think about what exactly is happening.
In this excerpt, Tucker manages to not only give us a good explanation of what style of humor Fey brings to the table, but what kind of humor 30 Rock brings to the table. I'm sure many people have tried to describe the show to their friends before to convince them to watch it. I bet no one has come close to a perfect description of it like Tucker gives the reader.
He also brings the thought of how the show does not only manage to get away with making fun of the station it broadcasts on, but the corporate sponsors of the network as well. Observations like this will stick in a reader's head, and probably carry with them all the way to the bottom of the article where they can leave their comment on it.
Tucker gets bonus points for grammar usage in this excerpt. A semicolon and a hyphen in the same excerpt!? Well done sir! Those are things a lot of people often use incorrectly.
Excerpt # 3
Where 30 Rock is deeply skeptical about any kind of organized power-structure, whether it’s private industry or public policy, Parks and Recreation’s fundamental message is that pride, hard work, and engagement in civic affairs can be effective and humane.What’s great is that Poehler and Fey have made these wildly different approaches to comedy work. If they were scheduled back-to-back (not that I’m advocating that; I still enjoy The Office right where it is), they’d be a sweet-and-sour, salt-and-pepper treat.
That's the money excerpt right there. This is the part of the post that will create the deep thought for the reader to eventually elicit a comment response from them. Like I said earlier, Tucker delivers another great description of what kind of show 30 Rock is, along with Parks and Recreation. Tucker manages to give comedy a purpose in this excerpt, which I really like. The idea of if the shows were back-to-back and calling it a sweet-and-sour treat is a nice comparison as well. Anyone who watches the shows know the two attract laughs in very different manners, which Tucker successfully explains in this blog post.
The entire blog post is proof Tucker is one of the best bloggers around and knows how to make readers react and think about something as typical as a television show. Tucker didn't just write about a show, he made something of a thesis statement and compared two shows.
That's it for this week. As a bonus, here's a clip from Parks and Recreation. I feel like this is one of the most under-appreciated shows around. Watch it!
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