SWF Seeks Decent TV Recap Site

I wrote a blog a while ago regarding the demise of the Television Without Pity website. The nice thing is that people are reading it and people are agreeing with me.

Lately, I've had some downtime at work and have been reading old recaps. I've tried to read the new ones but I'm finding them increasingly sloppy and dull. I'm disappointed in the writers I used to enjoy. M. Giant, for example, has been assigned to The Office. This should be a good thing but, unfortunately, he seems a little bored by the show. I've enjoyed his recaps of 24 and Six Feet Under in the past and he's funny. He always had just the right amount of snark to be witty but not enough to seem cruel. However, his recaps of The Office are, frankly, boring. I'm disappointed. One of my favourite things to do at work when I have a break is read about my TV shows. Entertainment Weekly has a pretty decent TV Watch column that recaps shows but like TWOP, it's hit and miss. Their Office recaps leave a lot to be desired, mixing up cutesy with entertaining. The writer, Whitney Pastorak likes to refer to readers with annoying terms like Binder Clips. That gets old really quickly. Also, Whitney also doesn't always seem to watch the same show as the rest of us and her recaps often miss the funniest moments of the episode as well as not finding it funny when it is.

So, I turn to TWOP for a recap instead. Unfortunately, lately, it's a little like reading a synopsis of the show with none of the witty snark I once loved about this site. Yes, I want to know what happened on the episode but I've previously relied on the recap writers to laugh about or be annoyed about the show with us. Where's the clever humour that we used to get?

Speaking of Television About Pity, I think it's time for Jacob to get a better editor. I don't watch Ugly Betty regularly but I like to follow it if I miss it anyway. It's a cute show. Entertainment Weekly has stopped including the show on their TV Watch. I missed an episode and thought I'd turn to TWOP for their recaplet, just to see what I'd missed. I didn't want the full recap, I just wanted to know, in a nutshell, what had happened. Unfortunately, it lead to this recaplet (you might have to click on the URL at the top of the page to get the recaplet in a nutshell to which I'm referring). I've never been a fan of Jacob's recaps, I think he waffles and has pretentions that he's writing great literature. However, he used to be a little better edited so that his soapbox speeches and monologues about being gay weren't so blatant. We get it, Jacob. You're gay. You're proud. How exciting for you. Could we now have a recap in which we don't have to read about it AND in which we can actually understand what you're saying about the show? You want to grandstand, do it on your own blog. Let us read a recap of a TV show on Television Without Pity, ok?

Yes, I'm a little bitter. As I mentioned in my original post, I used to want to write for this show. Part of the reason I thought about doing a TV blog in the first place was to give back from the days I'd loved TWOP. Yet I don't want to copy them or do recaps of my own because it was once an original idea and I don't like to steal ideas like that.

I think my biggest problem with TWOP is that they don't always replace recappers when it's time. Occasionally, a recapper gets burned out and it shows in their writing. The recapper still stays on a show but the readers become subject to venomous and hate-filled posts about a show that really isn't that bad. As I pointed out before, there's a fine line between snark and bitterness. This reluctance to replace recappers has been going on even prior to Bravo's buyout of the site.

The best example is the former recapper known as Pamie. She was a recapper for Gilmore Girls. I've been reading past recaps since I'm rewatching the show and I have to say, she went from being funny to just being tiresome. In the beginning, she loved the show and her recaps were fresh, funny and well-observed. Somewhere around the third or fourth season, her love turned to hate and we readers were subjected to recaps in which she complained she was bored. These recaps became filled with important details from Pamie's life such as what was in her handbag, what music she was putting on her iPod and the inane and dull details of her upcoming wedding. She would give us this information under the guise that the show was too boring to recap.

The thing is like every job, if you hate it that much then leave. Seriously. The culmination of Pamie's loathing came during a recap for a Gilmore Girls episode in which she bitterly informed readers that she'd received a lot of emails that irritated her, that complained about her recaps. She even posted a couple of the emails which, for the most part, were dead-on in their accuracy and were polite and extremely kind. Unfortunately, rather than face the truth about her writing, Pamie launched into a recap that she wrote in two parts- her own embittered, dull and cruel writing and the voice of Stac(e)y, a fictional fangirl who adored the show. The problem was that Stac(e)y was an insult to all of the readers: She spoke in fangirl talk, using acronyms, exclamation points, and text speak. She gushed about the show and provided a thinly veiled cover for Pamie's own bitterness. It was insulting to the readers and rather than provide a snarky and clever retort as I think Pamie intended, it made her look ridiculous and proved that she could not take criticism. She finally 'left' her job a couple of recaps later under the pretense that she was too busy. My opinion is that the editors FINALLY realized it was time for her to move on. They were a little late; Pamie's moderate success as a novelist and screenwriter had allowed her ego to grow to the point where I think they couldn't control her. I could be wrong but read the recaps and you'll see what I mean.

Yet this inability to take criticism is echoed throughout the site, from Jacob's recaps to the forums. For a site that takes pride in mocking the work of other writers and loves the freedom of speech, the forums certainly don't reflect that. Forum posters are strictly bound to rules they must follow in order to be 'permitted' to participate. They can't insult or mock the writers because otherwise they'll be banned. The forums are so heavily moderated that it is impossible to have a good discussion about a show anymore.

I know I said most of this before in my earlier post but I've had a lot of supportive emails from people who've found me and agree with me. While I think the Bravo takeover drained the soul from the site completely, I think it was already in a decline before. The Bravo buyout hasn't done them any favours, it's a mishmash of videos and blogs that are hard to get through. They recently completely irritated me by listing "Love Actually" as one of their worst Christmas movies. "Love Actually" is fantastic. It's funny, poignant and brilliantly poignant. The ensemble cast is smooth and the moment where Andrew Lincoln's character holds the posters up for Kiera Knightly's character to tell her he loves her is one of the sweetiest non-sappy moments in any romantic comedy.

This post is really not to serve any purpose but to rant about the lack of decent TV recaps on the web anymore. If anyone has another site to point me to, I'd greatly appreciate it. I really want to break up with Television Without Pity because it just doesn't fill my compulsion to follow up on my TV shows anymore. I know TV is a vice but it's a vice I love. I love to talk about it, read about it and learn about it. I used to love to read the recaps but that love is fading fast and I don't want to lose it completely.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment or complain; I promise not to be passive-agressive and write a post mocking you for it.

The Demise of Television Without Pity

Once upon a time, there was a website that used to recap television. It was a website that had some attitude, a healthy amount of perspective and some very funny, if blunt, opinions of the best shows on TV. It was a site in which a collective of writers covered select TV shows and did a thorough recap of each episode, peppered with snark and sarcasm and a healthy dose of realistic editorial opinion. It was a site for which TV loving writers would have loved to write, especially those writers, like myself, who can objectively and sarcastically talk about TV shows, beloved or not.

There were some flaws, naturally. Some of the writers were much better than others. The collective of writers were a little clique, their FAQ proving that they didn't take well to outsiders and didn't care to. The forums were too heavily moderated, almost communistic in some of the ways in which comments were censored. Sometimes their writers were downright cruel to the readers who criticized them, coming across as petty and mean rather than snarky and funny. But, aside from all that, it was a fun, entertaining website in which one could easily get lost in reading the witty, funny and mostly dead-on recaps of television shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, America's Top Model, etc. They were always shows that would have the type of following to seek out recaps, shows that were so good they deserved a recap, even when they had bad episodes, or shows so bad that they simply had to be recapped in all their cheesy nonsense.

The site was Televison without Pity (TWOP for short), once glorious, now a commerical site in which the snark is lost in the glitz of Bravo Television.

But let's back up to the glory days. The site was founded by three individuals, known on TWOP as Sars, Wing Chun and Glark. They built the site based on their original effort, Mighty Big TV, a site originally built entirely around one TV show: Dawson's Creek. Mighty Big TV eventually became TWOP. The site was tightly run, the recaps well edited and mostly hilarious. The forums would entice undercover Hollywood players like Aaron Sorkin who would defend his show. There were interviews with writers of TV shows, humble, well-written interviews in which you'd actually learn about a show. It was evident that those that worked for TWOP loved their job, even when they were assigned awful TV shows to recap. Though other sites sprung up, most notably TWOP Sucks, that would bash TWOP and its writers, these sites did little except emphasize the point that TWOP had become a pop culture must, a place for TV lovers to congregate, virtually and it the case of events like TARCON (The Amazing Race Conventions), in reality too.

And then, the site was sold to Bravo. It was most likely financially a smart business choice for the founders. After all, what had begun as a blog had become a viable business. It hosted advertising, so there was definitely some profit being made as well as a store that sold TV gear, referencing obscure moments in TV. Yet, Bravo came calling and it's likely a lot of money was offered. To founders like Sars, Wing Chun and Glark, there probably seemed little to lose. They would make money, the writers would be guaranteed payment and the responsibility would be off their shoulders.

Bravo took over and one year later, Sars, Wing Chun and Glark left the site. There is little to be discovered about their departure, whether it was part of the original buyout contract or whether the site went so far from the original conception that they were disgusted enough to take their big checks and leave. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that Bravo's takeover of TWOP has killed the site in almost every way that matters.

Certainly, the site still exists and the archive of recaps is still there. The writers still recap the shows still airing that they recapped before the buyout. Yet now, there are recaps for shows that the original site didn't acknowledge, shows like So You Think You Can Dance, Law and Order: SVU and The Biggest Loser. There are many more photos and images. There is much more advertising. There is a spin off called Movies Without Pity. There are videos now. All in all, it's very glossy and shiny. It looks like a big budget site.

But the heart is gone. The soul of TWOP has fled, perhaps with the founders, perhaps when the contract with Bravo was signed. Some of the writers from the glory days are there, like Jacob and Couch Baron. But without the editing and tight reign of Sars and co., they have also declined. Jacob, always prone to waffling, has become boring. He has always brought the fact that he is a gay man into his recaps, often a tiresome aside, but nowadays, it has become the forefront of the majority of his recaps. We get it. We get that there is homosexuality on TV. But it would also be nice to read about the show instead of the recapper's issue with Americas acceptance of homosexuality (His American Idol recaps and Ugly Betty recaps especially). Jacob has started loving the sight of his own words and without a strong editor to reign him in, he's become pompous, irritating and unreadable. Couch Baron, still one of the strongest writers on the site, has become lazy. His perceptions are still sharp but without editing he, too, often rambles and sometimes its hard to get through the recaps of shows like Heroes. The writing is no longer snarky, it's just outright mean. There are now many Weecaps, shorter versions of recaps that basically give the episode in a nutshell. The site used to nail much of why a show was silly, Clifford the Big Red Ball from Alias is still one of the funniest references ever. But those references and recaps are few and far between these days. The effort to get a recap up quickly means that editing in minimal and there are grammatical, spelling, punctuation and factual errors in many of the recaps that are published.

The forums have grown worse. They are more heavily moderated than ever. The moderators have the right to delete a post, commenters must carefully phrase emails so they're not accused of flaming someone just because they don't agree. They are no longer fun to read and it's often hard to remember they're there anymore. The number of posts has declined dramatically and it's hard to find a reason to visit anymore.

Bravo attempted to get more people onto the TWOP site by hosting the TV Bigshot game in which participants attempted to create a TV network and picked shows to air. Points were assigned based on a show's ratings; if your network owned a show that did well in the ratings, you won points. It was a good idea, in theory. In reality, it was a game that wasn't well moderated; the rules would change, the points were miscalculated and the top scorers were always the same. Players would attempt to use strategy to pick their shows and then, because of a 'server error' or other such excuse, points for the week weren't calculated, thus ensuring no way to climb up in the rankings. As seems to be the case of the new TWOP site, it looked pretty on the outside but it lacked substance and guidance from within.

TWOP remains. It is still a place to read a decent recap or two; Drunken Bee's Friday Night Lights recaps are examples of beautiful, lyrical writing, especially the early episodes. Yet because there is no soul, the site seems empty. The personality is gone, clouded by corporate commercialism. Though it's still a site to read about TV, it has lost the sheen of talent that made it great and given way to a gloss that makes it mediocre. It's always a shame when greatness falls, even when it's just a site for television geeks and in the case of Television Without Pity, greatness has fallen far.