Canon

What is Canon?

This used to be a pretty simple question to answer. Whatever showed up on the screen was what happened and what was canon for a TV Show. (Canon: What is deemed law/true about a show and its characters) With the advent of the internet, behind-the-scenes, DVDs, and interviews, things beca

me a bit more complicated.

Shows sometimes run a bit too long to fit into their time slot, and if it’s not a massive hit, the network isn’t going to allow the show the run over. Thus the introduction of TV deleted scenes, now frequently able to be watched via TV DVDs and the internet, leads to the first crimp in the distinction between canon and not. These scenes were written, cut, filmed, and approved by everyone involved with the show. They were only cut because of time. The showrunners wanted to put the scenes in, and without network restrictions, would have. They released the deleted scenes willingly as content. Sometimes it is possible on DVDs to watch an episode with its deleted scenes intact. Should they therefore count as real and true within the universe of the show? Do we assume they happened?

Regardless, though, these scenes weren’t aired. I can think of at least one instance off the top of my head where a deleted scene was directly contradicted by a later aired episode. Looking at both the deleted scene and the later aired episode as canon would give me a bit of a headache.

Then there’s what people say. This tends to fall under two categories: actors and writers/showrunners. Actors will often state things about their characters or what they were thinking when they were performing in a scene. It’s the actor’s job to provide the subtext for a scene, but if they put a voice to their subtext interpretation, does that make it true? Writers/showrunners can give explanations as to why things happened in plot, what they considered was going on, and why they wrote a character doing a particular thing or saying a particular line. Some people will consider this extra information canon, because it was the author’s intent. Others will say that it’s not true if they haven’t put it directly on the screen.

Finally, there’s what some people like to call “fanon”—canon as interpreted by the fans. This often comes about as a result of “fanwanking,” which is when viewers go “Okay, that didn’t make any sense. For what reason could that have possibly happened?” and come up with an answer. Large overarching beliefs about a series tend to be encompassed in fanon, until such point as they become contradicted by what is shown on screen.

(There are also shows with tie-in books, comics, and webisodes, which bring in another level of canon interpretation. Spin-offs also make things a bit tricky, as they generally occur within universe.)

Essentially, canon is a difficult concept to pin down nowadays. Everyone pretty much agrees that what you see and hear on-screen is the ultimate law. Some will posit that whatever those involved with the show say is also true. After all, the writers and the actors know what they’re trying to accomplish. But others will insist that it needs to be shown onscreen to be considered a part of the show’s canon. The interpretation of the creator/showrunner/writer/actor is just another kind of fanon; also legitimate, but still, in the end, an interpretation.

The Guilty Pleasure Show

Almost everyone who watches television has at least one “guilty pleasure show”—something you find engrossing and entertaining, but at the same time you know isn’t actually good. There are plenty of good, quality television shows out there. This blog post is not about them.

This blog post is also not about guilting you about your guilty pleasure shows. Everyone’s entitled to mindless entertainment sometimes. And the guilty pleasure show has evolved into a genre all its own—one that’s been helped and cultivated by the advent of DVRs and the internet.

A guilty pleasure show is generally one you don’t want to admit to watching, so it’s not necessarily one you want to play in the middle of your living room. There’s something embarrassing about it—maybe you’re not its targeted audience, maybe it’s universally panned, maybe it’s a reality show everyone mocks—but at the same time, you don’t want to stop watching it.

There’s nothing wrong with being addicted to a bad show—entertainment doesn’t always need to be high art. Here are a few clues as to whether or not what you’re watching is really a guilty pleasure show.

1) Some element of shame or embarrassment—As mentioned, you don’t necessarily want to tell people this is appointment television for you.

2) Watching habits—Everyone has their own styles of watching television; some people love to do so with lots of people, others can’t stand the chatting company. If you’re the former, chances are there are still one or two shows you don’t want to watch in a crowd. If there's a show you consistently watch on your computer with headphones instead of among friends, it may be a guilty pleasure. (It is also possible your friends have bad taste, of course.)

3) Rationalizations—These are planned ahead of time in case someone finds out you watch the show. “I’m just watching for (actor)!” “I liked it when I was a kid!” “Hey, they’re really hot!” “The way they’re exploring X storyline is really interesting!” “Sidekick B is awesome!” All of those facts may be true, but if you're that quick to come to the defense of something, you've probably been expecting someone to attack you for it.

But hey, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, and even if the show is terrible, there’s something that’s catching your eye. So start utilizing your guilty pleasure shows to figure out what you like about them. It’s a lot easier to find a diamond when you’re looking through a pile of crap than a pile of jewels, anyway. If a show is mostly horrid, but it has snappy dialogue, a particular quirky character, or an interesting on-going plot, you'll learn that that's a trait you like in a TV show. Guilty pleasure shows are actually really good ways to refine your tastes, so when the glut of new shows comes on in the new season, you know what you’re looking for and what shows have a good chance of being in your wheelhouse.

Besides, now when someone catches you watching a show you’re embarrassed of, you can always claim it’s research.

The Sophomore Slump

A few shows are great right out of the gate—critical and ratings successes in their first season. Reviewers love them, fans love them, and they are trumpeted throughout the land as The Way to Do Television. Then they hit their second season, and all of a sudden, things take a turn for the worse.

There’s a dip in quality. Fans are up in arms, talking about the Wonder of the previous season and how it’s all gone wrong. Critics shake their heads disappointedly. And everyone starts mentioning the “sophomore slump.”

A lot of shows have gone through it: Lost, Heroes, Glee. And the bigger hits they are, the harder they can fall. Either way, there are several reasons (some legitimate, some less so), that shows can go through the sophomore slump.

1) Time Crunch: Creators can spend a lot of time planning the first season of their TV show—odds are, it won’t get on the air before being decently planned out. However, after it begins airing, all they have for planning time is the hiatus between seasons, which can lead to some very compressed creative decision-making. Veronica Mars wasn’t a ratings hit, but it was a critical darling. But after season one, the creator had a few months to put together a second-season mystery, as compared to the long time he had spent crafting the first season (originally as a novel). As a result, fans and critics complained that the pacing was off for the second season, and the mystery seemed a little less coherent as compared to the show’s original season.

2) New characters: Shows don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, so a lot of times they’ll bring in new blood for the second season. However, viewers are already attached to the original characters, and they’re not always thrilled to find new faces taking up the screen time they believe should be going to their old favorites. Rules for new characters: Make them interesting, integrate them into the plot, don’t overwhelm the viewer with them… and again, please, make them interesting. Heroes is one of the main perpetrators of this (though it is not alone). Heroes is an interesting case, however. It was very much a large ensemble show, and really couldn’t take the glut of new characters the second season threw at the audience—it barely had enough screentime for all of its original regulars. However, Heroes was originally designed to have a new cast of heroes each season; fans got attached to the original cast, the network got attached to the fans, and they tried to combine the two concepts. It didn’t work.

3) New storylines: Many arc-driven shows will complete a main arc in one season. This is logical, especially for the first season, because shows can’t count on being renewed while they’re only in planning stages. Audiences can be fickle. However, this means that they now need to begin a second arc for their second season, and audiences and critics won’t always take well to the new storylines. Lost had some trouble getting viewers to adjust to The Others storyline (which suffered both from being a new storyline and surrounding new characters). It also risks a shift in tone, which can alienate the audience.

4) First impressions/Hype: And then there’s the unavoidable one. Sometimes people can get attached to a show and how it was in the beginning, and any change (good or bad) is wrong. Even if new characters and storylines are pitch-perfect, they are not the same, and therefore viewers disapprove. A show’s own hype can also lead to problematic backlash—even if the show is on par in terms of quality, it’s not as good as it was supposed to be, or not as good as people remember it being. In this day and age, things can go stale very quickly, and aspects of quality television are unfortunately no exception to that rule.