From: gannon@sbphy.physics.ucsb.edu (Mark Andrew Gannon)
Newsgroups: alt.tv.northern-exp
Subject: Re: Send Bubble Man Complaints to ...
Date: 13 Dec 92 17:53:39 GMT

gordon_Wong@mindlink.bc.ca (Gordon Wong) writes:

>Here is the address of the Northern Exposure production company in Washington
>State. You can flood them with mail regarding what you think of the Bubble
>Man:

>Pipeline Productions
>7140 180th Avenue Northeast
>Redmond, Washington 98052
>U.S.A.

>P.S. If you want to write to the stars of the show, you could also send them
>mail c/o Pipeline Productions.

Much as I hate Bubble Guy (I posted a long article blasting this season
of NExp in gen'l and specifically Mike a few weeks ago.  It was called
"Why _I_ Don't Like Mike."), I must take issue with this idea.  
The writers of NExp, despite all the intervention of reviewers and
studio execs and network execs and worst of all the damn ratings people,
are artists.  If you were in a museum and saw a painting by one of your
favorite painters, but you didn't like this particular painting, would
you write letters to the painter?  Would you tell the painter how to
paint?  No.  That's ridiculous.  
I think anybody trying to work in TV or film today has too many
non-artists nosing around and making "suggestions" about how to fix this
or that.  The whole ratings system determines who gets or does not get
advertisers, and so every program must now be tailored to the Neilsen
families' tastes.  I just read an article in the L.A. Times about the
"big three" networks agreeing to some pact that says they'll reduce
violence on TV.  These things are not necessarily good.
Here are two examples of reduced violence giving what I believe is the
wrong message:
1)  The "G.I. Joe" cartoon show
In each episode of this show, thousands and thousands of
rounds of ammunition are expended but nobody gets hit.
I think an episode of "GI
Joe" in which a major character is killed would be instructive.  There's
no way to keep kids and toy guns apart.  Kids think guns are cool.
Kids will play "war" with sticks for guns if they don't have plastic
uzis.  And of course, at the end of the day, everybody goes home alive.
This is in contrast to real wars, in which people die.  This may seem
like an obvious statement, but I don't feel that TV, especially
children's TV, gets this idea across.  Would the death of a character
depress children?  I don't know.  I'm not a child psychologist.  But
would it be suppressed by parents' groups?  Certainly.  These groups
don't seem to realize that allowing a show about a military group with a
lot of hardware designed with the sole purpose of killing people, but
not showing that this stuff actually DOES kill people is not a good
idea.  If all the "Joes" survive every episode, and all the enemies
parachute to safety when their planes and helicopters are destroyed,
kids don't learn how dangerous guns really are.

**Please do not send me any mail on the gun control debate.  If you are in
favor of gun control, you will not find a sympathetic ear.  I consider
the 2nd Amendment as sacred as the 1st.  Mess with one and you weaken
the other.  I advocate leaving the Bill of Rights alone.  
If you feel as I do about the 2nd Amendment, you may still find that I
don't agree with you about everything.  For example, I support a seven
day waiting period.  **

2) The second example is virtually identical.  Apparently, parents'
groups put enough pressure on whoever was in charge to make sure that
the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" couldn't use their weapons in their
second movie.  So now you have a group of 4 turtles worshiped by every 4
to 12 year old in the country.  Each turtle is carrying a deadly weapon.
The turtles are "ninja," or assassins, and yet they never use these
weapons or kill (or even seriously injure) an opponent.  The lesson?
Huge martial arts battles, even with edged weapons involved, are cool
and nobody really gets hurt.  This sort of thing can lead to kids
hurting each other.  

Anyway, the point of these examples is that outside pressure from people
who had no business messing with the shows made them do things that
might be more than compromised art: it might be harmful to the audience.
In the case of NExp, they may just be suffering from a little "sniffle"
in their writing department.  But it is my suspicion (see my post on
Mike) that the reason the writing is bad is because somebody from the
show read the reviews, and now they're actively trying to make the show
"quirky" and "offbeat."
What made NExp great in the first few seasons was its natural flow.
Nobody worried "will this new element fit"- everything just did.  Now
the whole thing seems artificial and self-conscious.  WRITING LETTERS
TELLING THEM HOW TO MAKE IT BETTER WILL ONLY EXACERBATE THE SITUATION.
If you want to write letters, write to the producers and say in general
terms that you think the show has lost something, so get off the
writers' backs and let them do their thing.  If a campaign like that
works and the writers have a bit more artistic freedom, then either the
show will get back on track, indicating that it was middle management
intervention that made this season bad, OR the show will continue to
stink up Monday night and we'll know it was just good old fashioned bad
writing.  Let's hope for the former.

--Mark
  :-b

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"Never do second order perturbation theory."  --Toby Falk
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Newsgroups: alt.tv.northern-exp