'That's the Golden Globes, the second most important awards show in Hollywood. After the People's Choice Awards - where the fans are in charge.'

For some reason, I voted in the People's Choice Awards last night. I have never done this before, and was surprised to find that you can vote multiple times. I suspect this will lead to Ian Somerhalder winning just about everything.

Anyway, faults aside, the most enlightening thing about the experience was the clear crystalization of the fall season's offerings: Astounded, I took a screen shot:

Do you know what I voted for? Can you guess? 

Nothing! I voted for nothing! In hindsight, I wish I'd voted "Hellcats," since its promos during "America's Next Top Model" delight me to no end. 

Oh hai, Marita Covarrubias.

I was watching "The Walking Dead" last night, and I just realized for the first time that Laurie Holden is playing one of our survivors! (I didn't pay THAT much attention last week.)

Someone should tell Robert Kirkman and Co. that if they need, like, a makeup reference or something, they should check out "The X-Files" episode "One Son," because Holden totally creeps up out of nowhere looking like death. Normally, I find that episode to be a total bummer due to all that Cassandra Spender/Cigarette Smoking Man tragedy, but, yeah. Black-oiled Laurie Holden is probably a rough approximation of zombied Laurie Holden.

Edit @ 3:34 p.m.: Recap from last night is up at Movieline. Go check it out, dudes. 

Spoilers, Part II: How to quantify spoilers post-facto

A few weeks ago, I delivered a rambling diatribe about how an increasing fear of spoilers by people spoiled by time shifting is putting a damper on the cultural conversation.

And now, after tooling around in Adobe Illustrator for a few hours when I should have been working on a paper that's due tomorrow, I bring you The Spoiler Post-Facto Continuum — an easy way of quantifying the severity of the post-facto spoiler you're thinking, right this very second, about disseminating.

How about that: I'm offering a solution for my gripe. Though I might point out that the complexity of this chart (well, relative to the alternative, which is just saying whatever you want) totally adds to my point about dampening the conversation.

In other news, I recapped "The Walking Dead" for Movieline last night. Check it out!

Edit 3:58 p.m.: One thing that occurs to me now is whether the medium or the time is more important. Thoughts?

7:29 p.m.: Edited on account of rethinking some things. Same idea, though.

Armchair media research: What went wrong with 'Caprica'

SyFy boxed (see what I did there?) Caprica yesterday, right on the heels of its announcing "Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome." You know what they say: If at first you don't succeed, just keep pumping out spin-offs until something sticks.

And so, as we look fondly upon our Laura Roslin posters remembering what was, let us analyze the error of "Caprica's" ways and hope for a brighter, less abbreviated future for "Blood and Chrome."

1. It wasn't what we wanted. This is where the largest deviation occurs, I think. Post BSG, when we were all either angry and embittered over Starbuck's transformation into the great metaphorical pigeon, or glandularly satisfied by the discovery that we are all descendants of Grace Park, we primarily wanted BSG to go the hell away. We were tired of repeating the words to "All Along the Watchtower" to ourselves. We were tired of Bear McCreary's Final Five theme. We were tired of those drums.
   
   But we were also very nostalgic and very devoted. So when this series about Caprica before the fall was announced, it was briefly appealing. Caprica BTF was an era only explored in a series of carelessly incorporated finale flashbacks, and then slightly in "The Plan." We had wonderful, deeply formed ideas about how the development of the cylons should be handled, how Caprica should be a debaucherous mess, how William Adama would grow into a strapping, albeit acne-scarred viper pilot. And then we got this unfocused tragedy that did not capture the spirit of BSG at all — save the occasional appearance of Bear McCreary's drum. It was a different show, and that was not what we wanted, despite our disenchantment following the finale.
   
   
2. It wasn't what it could have been. This point is about structure. The series began with a terrorist attack that couched the entire series in debate between monotheism and polytheism. The monotheists, of course, were the terrorists. Heavy handed? I mean, nah. Anyway — very high concept premise, not unlike BSG. However, post-tragedy, when Daniel Graystone devises a plan to put his daughter's avatar in a metalic frame, things take a turn for the ... slow. We have a potentially dangerous machine, and sure she's a moody teenager, which kind of sucks (but is also slightly funny in a cheeky kind of way), but we have a machine, and that is one of the essential ingredients in the rock soup of things going to hell. But that's as far as things progress, which I believe we cannot blame on the show's abbreviated run. We've had 15 episodes of a show that should cover decades. We have barely covered a year, and it has been a boring damn year. This gets back to the not-what-we-wanted point, but in a show where the main appeal was the development of malicious, out-of-control robots, we needed way more robot. And way more William and Joseph Adama, who have been way under-used this season.
   
   
3. It wasn't what it should have been. (The distinctions I'm making now do not make any sense, but I am sticking with them because that's what "Caprica" did. See? I'm making a point.)
   
   "Caprica," if you keep the end in mind, was destined to be a pretty sizable tragedy. I always found, when I was watching, that if I remembered that — that all of these wholly detestable characters were swiftly marching toward their own demise — it was a lot more compelling than trying to sympathize with them. Trying to sympathize with them led to failing the 21-minute test. Ultimately, I think one of "Caprica's" flaws was that it tried too hard to humanize people that we should never have liked. I think it might have finally gotten it right with Clarice this season, who went from quiet support of monotheism to rivaling James Marsters' character in the terrorist department, and maybe that's the direction they were actually taking it. Eric Stoltz is now completely in the pocket of the mob (though he seems to have forgotten completely about his robot child, which is kind of the point of the whole thing). "Caprica" just too vastly under-emphasized the fact that it was destined to be a tragedy, in which all of our anti-heroes would become victims of their own greed and intolerance.

Any other ideas about why "Caprica" failed? When did you tune out, if you tuned in at all? Will you watch "Blood and Chrome?"

Spoilers, Part I: Spoilers and spoilers post facto

There are two categories of spoilers. You've got your standard, Ausiello File-type spoiler that you can chose to partake in or abstain from (This is the kind that you seek out, and later, after Sydney Bristow wakes up in that alley in Hong Kong and you're like, "I totally knew that was going to happen," you regret). And then there's the other. The spoiler post facto.

The SPF, we'll call it, has become a problem as time shifting — bending your TV to your will and disregarding the network grid — has become the norm. Interactive TV used to be as simple as changing the channel when you didn't want to watch something, or turning up the volume. Now, after VCRs, BitTorrent, Tivo, DVR, Hulu and Netflix Instant Watch give us options to watch whenever we want. TV used to be rigid and ritualistic. J.R. got shot (spoiler post facto alert) and you either saw it or you missed it. If you missed it, you asked your buddy for a detailed recap. If you saw it, you gave your buddy a detailed recap.

These days, TV's going the way of the family dinner. What used to united whole households and even communities in discussion now has us fragmented. It's whenever you have a minute to spare, whatever you want to watch, and solitary.

Speaking of "Alias," it's like Michael Vaughn says to Irina Derevko in episode six of season two ("Salvation"): "It's not that knowing [time shifting] hasn't made my life better. It has. But it's also made it that much worse."*

And here's how!

1. Since it's whatever you want whenever you want, that means people are watching more TV — theoretically. The potential for this is good — more people watching means more voices in the cultural conversation. Plus, since time shifting all but eliminates competition between networks (at least in the mind of the viewers), things opposite "American Idol" might have a chance to survive via other distribution methods. Possibly. Essentially, more chances to watch means more opportunity for things to succeed. (This is perhaps too optimistic for me, but I like to think that as interactive TV stabilizes, this is what will happen.)
   
2. Since it's easier to adjust the continuity to suit your schedule, not only are we watching more TV, but we're watching more of the TV we're watching. Why just start with this season of "Dexter," for example, when you could stream all the episodes online and then DVR the rest of the season? (This is what you should do. It's super good.) The same is even true, increasingly, for shows with virtually no continuity, like "Modern Family" and "30 Rock." TV is less and less about what's on the air, and more about what's streaming or otherwise captured.
   
3. More people watching more of what they watch means more people are more deeply invested in their favorite shows. This brings up what, to me, is a rather baffling inconsistency:
1. People (feel free not to include yourself in this nebulous collective noun) have their very, very favorites. 
2. People are pretty slow about getting around to watching their very, very favorites, quite frankly. 
3. When people miss their very, very favorites, I'd say it's time to engage in a little moral shifting (while at the time shifting) and check out a torrent. Many do. Some do not.
1. If you do, good job. I sincerely believe your obsession.
2. If you do not — if you can't tease out another way to watch this very, very favorite show a few days after it airs — it might not be your very very favorite (inconsistency).
4. If a show is lower priority, and is one you** can't get around to watching for several weeks or months or perhaps several years after it airs, then just because you have the opportunity to watch these things at your leisure, please, for the love of god, do not assume the conversation is going to halt while you catch up.

I will now commence with a litany of spoilers post facto, just to keep things interesting:

1. Don Draper is now engaged to his secretary. Megan, I think.
2. Rita is dead. If you don't know that, "Dexter" is not your very, very favorite show.
3. The island wasn't purgatory. The other thing was.
4. Tony Soprano totally got shot. Or maybe he didn't.

We'll continue on this train in a few days with a (probably) self-explanatory piece about how whiners are putting the breaks on the cultural conversation.  

*I did all that from memory. Boosh!
**I decided to abandon my diligent use of "people" to describe the offenders. If you're offended, you're proving my point.