Two things from last week: (1) Heard a report on the state of the film industry claiming that the domestic market for U.S. films is only 20%, and the foreign market demands 3D and CGI. (2) Saw Hobbit2 with my new understanding of why Peter Jackson turned a classic fairy tale structure into an action movie.
All of which gave me a new understanding of why TV has been able to blossom into shows like Treme and Breaking Bad (if you can call that a blossom). There are some lesser shows out there for that portion of the audience stuck between Duck Dynasty and BBCAmerica (and some like me, who still watch a couple of things while muttering the next line under our breaths - maybe that just makes us feel smart.) I'm a writer, and believe me, it's hard to write characters smarter than you are.
So my theory is that there are a lot of career TV writers who are being asked to perform above and beyond the call of duty and that they're doing the best that they can. The best writers, who might once have written primarily for movies but who don't want their words swallowed in a flood of melting gold, are in the next room, and everybody's typing as fast as they can.