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Watching Any Good Serials?
Topic Started: Apr 12 2006, 09:28 AM (88,384 Views)
riddlerider
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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rodney
Feb 15 2008, 05:33 AM
If you ask me, the wrong way to watch serials is to watch more than one at a time. Nobody ever could do that, and they weren't intended for the viewer to watch 5 or 6 at once.

Good point, Rodney. Ha! Take that, Gravy!


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Laughing Gravy
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Well, we've just seen an ad posted in which a theatre in 1946 was showing both The Scarlet Horseman and King of the Forest Rangers. I guess Rodney thinks the ushers were standing at the entrance with pictures taken at the showing of the former to make sure nobody who had attended THAT one tried to get in to see the OTHER one, because it's "wrong" to watch more than one serial a week?

Hey, it's a matter of DISCIPLINE. I like to think of you Balconeers as top-of-the-food-chain primo classic movie lovers who appreciate both Ozu and Beaudine and who have the inner strength and intestinal fortitude to limit yourselves to one episode a week of a given serial, "the way God and Nat Levine intended." Well, all except Smoky. He's pretty much all donuts, Kit-Kat bars and pork 'n' beans, and if he could limit himself to less than three buckets of KFC a week, I'd be shocked...
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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igsjr
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You say "less than three buckets of KFC a week" like it's a bad thing.
"Life is in color--but black-and-white is more realistic..." -- Samuel Fuller, director

So many DVDs...so little time...
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Don Daredevil
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Large Marge
Feb 15 2008, 05:57 AM
Don Daredevil
Feb 15 2008, 06:20 AM
I usually watch 2, 3, 4 chapters at time. At my age and health condition I ain't got time to fool around! I could be gone in 15 weeks!  :D

Uh-huh. Well, lemme say, then, Donny, you should win some sort of award for bein' a devoted serial fan... I c'n jes' picture ya someday on yer deathbed, surrounded by loved ones, hearin' that heavenly choir callin' ya to yer final reward (or that red-hot jazz band callin' ya over to th' DOWN escalator, as th' case may be)... and yer last thoughts are, "SHOOT. Now I'll never get to see the last three epy-sodes of Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders!"

LOL :D ... oh looky it's Large Marge. She (it) really does exist! :D :lol:

Gravy, now don't you go gettin' dem 2 personalities mixed up now, ya hear ... you know, like you do yer serials. :lol: :P ;)
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Don Daredevil
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riddlerider
Feb 15 2008, 06:55 AM
rodney
Feb 15 2008, 05:33 AM
If you ask me, the wrong way to watch serials is to watch more than one at a time.  Nobody ever could do that, and they weren't intended for the viewer to watch 5 or 6 at once.

Good point, Rodney. Ha! Take that, Gravy!

I gotta go with that one too ... that would fry my brain :D ... especially if all 5 or 6 of 'em were Republic crime dramas. :D
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Laughing Gravy
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Good pernt... I tell you, watching G-Men Never Forget is just like watching a weird amalgram of Dick Tracy and Daredevils of the Red Soicle...
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Don Daredevil
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Here's one fer ye ... try watching all 4 of the Dick's Tracy's ...

Week 1 ... chapter 1 of Dick Tracy ...
Week 2 ... chapter 2 of Dick Tracy Returns ...
Week 3 ... chapter 3 of Dick Tracy's G-Men ...
Week 4 ... chapter 4 of Dick Tracy Vs. Crime, Inc. (Phantom Empire) ...

... keep cycling thru these 'till you've watched all the chapters of all of 'em.

By the time you finished you'd be a prime candidate for your local serial watchers asylum. :D :D :D
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marlin lee
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If you really want to see a serial "the way God and Nat Levine intended" there is only one way. When you order your serial DVDs you have them sent to a neighbor who decides which serial they will run. Then they show one chapter a week at the same day and time each week regardless of who does or doesn't show up. If you can make it you see the chapter. If you have something else you absolutely have to do, are out of town, or even just forget to show up then you miss that chapter. The only way you ever get a chance to see that chapter is if they decide to rerun the serial several years later.
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Don Daredevil
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What we need is a Serials Channel ;) ... you know, sorta like when TCM ran the 2 Superman serials a while back.
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Laughing Gravy
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That is the way we see serials every Friday night, in fact, Marlin. It absolutely helps keep our attendance high and interest and curiousity piqued, and yes, of course we have posters/lobby cards/stills up, too (you forgot that). Never let it be said that ol' Gravy didn't abide by what God and Nat Levine intended.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Sgt Saturn
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Quote:
 
Then they show one chapter a week at the same day and time each week regardless of who does or doesn't show up. If you can make it you see the chapter. If you have something else you absolutely have to do, are out of town, or even just forget to show up then you miss that chapter.


Your window of opportunity wasn't quite that narrow. My local theater showed the same serial episode Friday evening and Saturday morning. (I think it ran twice on Friday, but the second run was pretty late for small-fry.)

If you were really disparate, there might even be another theater showing the serial out of step with the local one. I can remember seeing the same chapter of Desperadoes of the West in two different theaters (in two different cities) one week apart.
The Ol' Sarge
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panzer the great & terrible
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Rodney, lots of theaters used to run chapters of different serials on the same day, sometimes as many as three, so I don't see how it can be wrong to do the same thing at home.

As for the one a week rule -- if I watch one chapter and then one more of the same serial on the same day, if find that my attention wanders during the second one, but if I watch a chapter of a different serial I'm glued to it. So for me, the Gravy rule makes sense.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Don Daredevil
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panzer the great & terrible
Feb 15 2008, 01:40 PM
As for the one a week rule -- if I watch one chapter and then one more of the same serial on the same day, if find that my attention wanders during the second one, ...

Short attention span? ... so what do you do if you happen to be watching a 1 hour show on TV or a movie? :D
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JazzGuyy
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We are well over 60 years past the heyday of the serial and using technology to watch them that even the most futuristic of the serials couldn't imagine. I think that gives us some rights to do some things you couldn't do in those days.

In 1940, unless you were lucky to live in a big city, you probably only had one chance to see a serial chapter. The expectation was that you would never see it again.

Nowadays, you can pretty much watch any available serial whenever (and even wherever) you want. This also gives you some things that add new pleasures to watching a serial that would not have been available to you in 1940.

I love the fact that by watching several chapters in a row and not having to wait a week I can see things in a serial that few people in 1940 would have seen. I can now see how the setup to the cliffhanger shown in the preceding chapter and the setup in the cliffhanger resolution differed, without having to try to remember what was different. I can spot all the cheats, all the lapses in continuity, and other things you couldn't have seen back then. I can even slow down the action or freeze frames and see the stuntman's face instead of the hero's. I don't think any of these things ruin a serial. I think they just take them to a different level but I'm sure LG is probably close to apoplexy reading this. And Large Marge will have to find out where I live first and I ain't telling her.
TANSTAAFL!
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Laughing Gravy
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JazzGuyy
Feb 15 2008, 02:04 PM
I'm sure LG is probably close to apoplexy reading this.

Nope. Quite the antithesis. Your post is the best argument I've ever read as to why chapterplays shouldn't be watched the way you watch them.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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