After the show had to cut their budget, they tried to make the show all emo and angsty to fit an indie vibe they were then trying to create to make the best of having to use those cheap hand-held cameras. No longer able to afford an orchestra to compose the incidental music, they went with cheesy F-list musical artists who probably sold CBS the music out of the trunk of their car after a gig at a coffee house next to a third-tier university--the worst musical piece being that God-awful opening theme song. *Only loooove can saaaave the worrrrld!*... In the event of an intense moment in the story, they use generic electric guitar which, again, probably came from a band that practices in the garage belonging to someone's parents or girlfriend. It doesn't make for a very good atmosphere to pull off a daytime drama.
In turn, I feel that the show has tried to adopt a self-impressed attitude similar to that of some righteous indie film people in order to spin the cutbacks, trying to act like not having traditional production standards makes them better because they're unique, subversive, and artsy-fartsy; they focus on feelings and characters and melodrama, or whatever. But the show is not any better. Watching characters mope around with a wobbly camera zoomed up in their face while lame music plays in the background is just straight up boring. And as much time is spent like that instead of spent with dialogue and story and such, the show could probably have been trimmed down to a half-hour a long time ago and kept just as much storyline content going. That would've been a better way to trim the budget than turning the longest running series on television into a student film project.
January 23, 2008Season 71 : Ep. 15344 (36:40)
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