Hitchcocker

There's this thing with "Eastern Philosophies" and "Western Philosophies" as it regards to storytelling.

Where folks say that "Western Philosophy" stuff needs a beginning and an end, a bad guy and a good guy, all the mysteries need a solution, blah blah blah, y'know, all that duality stuff.

Meanwhile Eastern Philosophy stuff is okay with an ever-unfolding mystery that never gets solved, and the audience that can handle that appreciates the ability of the storyteller to produce more and more beautiful mysteries, they appreciate each layer of the onion as it gets peeled back, rather than have the author solve them in a clever way and close the book on 'em so we can forget about 'em and get on with the next thing.

So as long as the journey is well done, it don't ever need to end or get anywhere, really, everybody maintains the potential to be a bad guy and a good guy in an Eastern Philosophy thingie more than they do anything else, and that potential hardly ever gets converted into any kind of kinetic energy that you could nail 'em for heh.

Its almost like the author is afraid to commit to saying anything is one way or another, while hoping that being vague will work to their advantage and that something random and awesome comes along at just the right time to save 'em, and in some cases, it is exactly that.

I don't think things need to be broken down like that, really, I mean, seems like there's plenty mixing going on between the two "types" in a mutually beneficial way, in all the good stuff, anyways.

And I'm a monk and everything, but I gotta admit that I like the Western Philosophy stuff.

A lot.

And when I saw that Fringe thing, all I was worried about was that it was gonna be another Lost, where its just like, a bunch of random weird stuff that tries to never make a point or tell you anything so that you can never complain and feel let down about it ahaha.

Like, the story is advancing without touching any of the walls or the ground, its keeping its options too open.

And the more you hold an audience back and tempt them and build suspense and make them waste their time wondering about your stuff like that, the better your ending better be, y'know?

You can't drag gunslingers along for months and months and then have a dud fer the ending where it all turns out to be a dream of a guy in an asylum and a big waste of time that nobody would've comitted to if they would've known that from the beginning or whatever heh.

But you do need to drag 'em along and tease 'em.

And the more you drag 'em along and tease 'em, the more time they waste messing with your crap, putting their hands on the steering wheel and all that, the more likely it is that they'll buy the car, even if you have a dud fer Le Grand Finale, y'know, that's that whole Cognitive Dissonance bit.

And the Eastern Philosophy Camp says that's okay, that's what its all about, yer making brain kindling, baby, I can help you help yourself!

Yah, see, so that's a good excuse to use heh.

"Oh its all enlightened and Zen and shit!"

Yah, when I think about it, see, I put myself in the shoes of a guy who just has to randomly make shit up for a show like Lost, and I'm like, shit man, that's too goddam easy, that's just like artists that are allowed to splash down totally random blobs of paint and call it art.

All the guys I like do the hard bits good, y'know, like taking that totally clumsy Western Philosophy thing with all its sharp edges and trying to do something interesting with it, something deliberate and awesome with a totally awkward and smoky piece of farm equipment.

Y'know, like Hitchcock.

You gotta take a chance and be kinda daring and ballsy to do a Hitchcock, where every single second is a bullet in your eye.

You can't even fail to do anything totally random and senseless, except by accidentally doing something that makes sense.

So there's like, points awarded for difficulty, there, like they do for gymnastics and diving and stuff, y'know?

Anyways, the weird thing is that I spent so much of Fringe worrying that it was gonna turn out to be a totally random bunch of crap like Lost that I didn't even notice how bad or good it was really ahaha.

That's like a new evolution of the medium right there, where you can sorta hide behind how bad Lost was AHAHA.

Actually it seems like a pretty good vehicle for telling weird stories, with the setup they got, I always thought the X-files had an awesome setup, as a vehicle for carrying stories, y'know, even if a lot of the shows themselves were a waste of time and I coulda done without the background story-arcs that remind me of the way superheroes tend to get all tangled up with too many visits to alien dimensions and too many uses of the time machine.

'Cause like, the Fringe is like, halfway between the X-files and the Matrix, y'know, with their "the world is a mad scientists lab, and he has a plan," that's pretty damn cool, right there heh.

If they get "guest" directors and writers like Mr Pink on the Sopranos, and like the X-files did, it could have some really good shows ahaha.

Hey, at least it ain't like CSI Miami!

Dude, CSI ain't even a mystery show, its a bunch of models walking around piles of gore and neon lights!

What is up with American Mystery shit, its so pitiful compared to English junk, its like they're writing Mysteries for Nascar folks or something.

Why can't they do good mysteries and still have it be for Nascar hillbilly folks and shit AHAHA.

I mean, c'mon, Poe and Lovecraft and Howard and all them, those were Americans, right?

Poe even married his sister and died from drinking too much or something, I mean, c'mon, seriously, doesn't get any more Nascar Hillbilly than that ahaha.

Aw whatever.

Edit: Like how I din't really commit on whether I liked it or not?

Goddammit ahaha.