I know that, but something that worked in the past, wouldn't necessarily work in the future. High School Musical was the thing that opened the door for a more modern version of this television genre. I'm not dissing Fame, I just don't think that it really has a place in this argument because of the time gap. Fame may have opened the door in the 80s, but the door had been closed for a while before High School Musical. I think we can both agree that there are plenty of things that worked in the 80s the definitely would not work today.   See 48 other replies

It's not just that every real life possible situation has been showcased on television it's more that everything is so mediated that even our "original" ideas have to be inspired by something to even come into existence. The very notion of originality isn't truly possible when the way we construct our very existence is in some way influenced by something else.
Like yes, how many times have shows/movies about fairy tales been done but also with how ingrained they our into culture and society can you imagine the difficulty in not being influenced by them at all if you were making a tv show/movie that was say a fantasy movie for children?
Even if brand new situations were showcased they would still have something that would be tied back to another art or book or just something else. Even a real-life situation brought to screen wouldn't be original truly because it's based off of/inspired by a situation in real-life and with most big themes like say love, death, chiildhood etc. covered originality does come from the way the story is told or even the choice of what to tell in the end.   See 48 other replies

Lisa C, Are you in the same business as those and the show?   See 48 other replies

Yes, there were some idiots that compared 'The Finder' to 'Burn Notice'.
The majority of 'Bones' fans [I'm 1 of them] were angry because they did the Finder pilot as 1 of the few remaining episodes of the season.   See 48 other replies

The problem is you can draw a connection between anything and say "it's from" that other story. John Carter trailers are on YouTube right now. Every comment makes an Avatar and Episode II comparison. Except John Carter is a 100 year old novel just being made into a movie now. So, should we instead presume Cameron and Lucas got their ideas from Burroughs? Then again, everyone said Avatar was Dances with Wolves with aliens. Then again, Dances with Wolves was criticized as being Lawrence of Arabia in the American Plains. Then again, Lawrence of Arabia was based on an actual person.Anything written, anything, can have a line drawn from it to something else and people can say it's similar or that we're revisiting the well. It's unavoidable. Which is the reason why originality doesn't come from the subject matter, it comes from the delivery.   See 48 other replies

I've read the back story on Fables (and how it almost got picked up by NBC/ABC) and Once Upon a Time definitely doesn't deserve the title of "ripoff" (I don't know about Grimm b/c I don't watch it, but it's probably not a ripoff either). Besides the "fairy tales in the real world" aspect, there are no parallels between OUAT and Fables. Mark and I differ on what makes something completely original, but I think we both agree that shows aren't ripoffs just because they have 1 or 2 similarities to another show. Everything would be a "ripoff" if that's the case.   See 48 other replies

Except that "Once Upon a Time" and "Grimm" are both ripoffs. They each originally began as a project to develop the comic book Fables into a TV show, then the networks decided to do it cheaper by taking the good ideas from Fables and producing their own series. I feel badly that Fables never did get made, and instead we are getting this grocery-store-brand version that NBC and ABC came up with on their own.   See 48 other replies