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Not too long after I post or you share this, I’m willing to bet you will get at least two kinds of responses. Number one is going to be a few people coming out to loudly proclaim that they are the mythical total top unicorn (bonus points for anyone who then starts joking, but not really, flirting with said person), and number two will be people loudly denouncing the heteronormative binary hegemony of top vs bottom.
Earlier in the week I looked at the shows that generated the most water cooler buzz over the course of 2013. Today, I’m gonna take a little more of a look behind the curtain, as we look back at the bigger stories that affected the small screen not only this year, but in years to come.
5 – Chris Hardwick’s Career Resurrection
Up until about a year or two ago, Chris Hardwick was best known as the “other host” on mid-90’s MTV show Singled Out (aka the annoying guy who stood next to Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra). After disappearing for nearly a decade, Hardwick slowly started to regain name recognition thanks to his current role as the kingpin of internet media giant The Nerdist. However 2013 was the year that we started to see Hardwick all over the screen, whether it was in a new comedy special, hosting The Talking Dead or Talking Bad for AMC, or his newest show, @Midnight on Comedy Central (which picked up a 40 week order a few weeks ago). It seems now that Hardwick, along with other veterans of the podcasting scene are slowly taking over comedy on television and is one of TV’s happier stories of 2013.
4 – Death Rocks Every Corner of Television
There have been very few years I can think of in which TV deaths have been more common and prominent than this year. Every era of television managed to have one key star pass away whether it was the Golden Age of TV in Jonathon Winters and Jean Stapleton of All in the Family to more modern shows such as the passing of Cory Monteith of Glee and Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini (both in untimely fashion). The theme of death seemed to even extend out to this years Emmy awards, where the show put eulogy style memoriams together for each of the mentioned above.
3 – CBS is slowly coming back into orbit with the other networks
In the last decade it seemed like CBS was immune to many of the trends that affected the rest of the big four: slumping ratings, a dearth of new hits, and a tendency to over tinker with their identity. However, we are now seeing CBS start to show real signs of creaking. Ratings are slowly dropping into the mid 2’s (the other three networks are in the mid 1’s for comparison), the shows that are getting ratings are slowly aging (NCIS, CSI, Two and A Half Men are all in their second decade, the finishing How I Met Your Mother is in season nine, even relatively young Big Bang Theory is in season seven), and it’s new shows aren’t pulling their weight. The days of a show pulling a number like “Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” did in 1983 are long gone.
2 – Showtime and AMC have a large rebuilding task in front of them.
It seems like every network is losing a flagship show by the end of the 2013-14 season, but this is most alarming for Showtime and AMC. Showtime, which has been reeling for a couple of years finished off one of it’s more popular series in Dexter in a floundering fashion, while AMC has to cope with the end of Breaking Bad. The problem with both is that the series that were meant to replace them, Ray Donovan for Showtime and Low Winter Sun for AMC were particularly weak, putting huge gaps in both networks summer lineups. While Showtime can fall back on Homeland and AMC has The Walking Dead and a spackle season of Mad Men to hold the fort, both need to do a better job developing series, or both will lose the good will that they’ve garnered over the past half-decade.
1 – Netflix is for real when it comes to original programming
2013 could potentially end up being a turning point in how we consume our scripted fare, and a large part of that is due to the explosion in prestige shows hitting internet distributors. While Hulu plus builds off of a network library and had some tepid hits, Netflix managed to put three top notch series in it’s original programming portfolio in House of Cards, Arrested Development, and Orange is the New Black. These add credibility to the web based distribution channels that are also slowly proliferating the public consciousness whether it’s drama based Wigs, Hulu Plus, Netflix, or Amazon Prime and more importantly represents the paradigm shift we’ve somewhat expected for a few years.
2013 felt like a weak year, particularly for the big four networks. However, there were a handful of shows that debuted this year that felt like they moved television forward, especially on the drama side of the ledger. Without further ado, here are the shows that debuted this year that shined the brightest.
5 – Getting On (HBO)
I just reviewed this show a couple of weeks ago, and until that time this fifth slot was very much in play. I was particularly amazed at the strength with which it blended its’ dramatic and comedic elements and how the cast seemed to do an excellent job playing off type in comparison to the roles they became best known for. While it may not be the sort of series that’s for everyone due to its’ extreme darkness, it is the sort of show that could fit a niche in the HBO lineup for years to come.
4 – Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox)
This was not a banner year for the sitcom, as the big four debuted a large number of series, the vast majority of which will not or should not see a second season. However, standing head and shoulders above that pile of mediocrity was Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which mixes up sitcom elements with procedural elements and is already miles ahead of where Michael Schur predecessors The Office and Parks and Recreation were after nine episodes. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is consistently funny and much like Parks and Rec has a surprising amount of heart.
3 – Hannibal (NBC)
I spend a decent amount of time pointing out every horrendous decision the peacock makes, so when something goes right over at NBC I feel compelled to throw them a bone. If Cult was the bottom of the serial killer trend we saw this year, than Hannibal stands hands and shoulders above the rest. Bryan Fuller has done the impossible with this show, which is to make a Hannibal Lecter that is different from, but not inferior to the Anthony Hopkins version from the films. The show also benefits from strong performances by Hugh Dancy and Laurence Fishburne as Will Graham and Jack Crawford respectively. However, to me, where Hannibal truly set itself apart was in it’s visuals. For a morbid show, it’s actually downright beautiful, a trend that establishes itself from minute one when Will is dissecting the first murder scene in his head. Here’s hoping this one makes it to season four, when Fuller will finally decide to tackle Red Dragon.
2 – Broadchurch (BBC America)
Bringing the single focus Twin Peaks vibe into the new generation, we get this new mystery from the BBC. Already optioned to be produced in America by Fox, the miniseries revolves around the death and disappearance of an 11 year old child, with the investigation being impeded by an irresponsible media and the closeness of inspector Ellie Miller to the family, her son’s wholesale destruction of evidence, and the new lead inspector’s questionable past. David Tennant and Olivia Colman get particular kudos as the lead inspector pairing, and quaint resort setting provides the perfect eerie backdrop for this case.
1 – The Americans (FX)
The best new show of the year was one that FX hyped a ton in 2012, including ads during all of its’ major shows and a website takeover. The Americans lived up to that hype, providing a throwback spy thriller about two Russian sleeper agents who happen to have their lives deconstructed, down to their marriage which exists solely for appearances. Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell shined in the lead role, with Russell playing ideologically tilted wife Elizabeth Jennings, while Rhys drew the harder task as conflicted husband Philip. Throw in a mix of visuals that seem simultaneously cutting edge and historically accurate while having feeling like an homage to the Beastie Boys “Sabotage” video, and it becomes clear how The Americans came to be the best of 2013.
Next Time: Friday we look at the biggest stories of the year in what seems to have been the beginning of a long term paradigm shift for television.
2013 was not exactly what we’d call a banner year for the broadcast networks. While buzz continued to center around cable and the ascension of Netflix to a legitimate player in the TV industry, the big four and CW tried desperately to find some comfort food in the form of tepid comedies and stories about serial killers. The end result was a miserable year for the new sitcom and a lot of shows that felt like exact clones of each other showing up. On that note, here’s the worst new shows of 2013.
Dishonorable Mention: LA Shrinks (Bravo), Blood and Oil (Discovery), Scrubbing In (MTV)
I tried to avoid lumping reality into this list, but these shows each left horrendous tastes in my mouth for different reasons. For Shrinks and Scrubbing In it was the reduction of legitimate medical professionals to glorified sex objects, while for Blood and Oil the combination of ridiculous plotlines and a purely unlikeable central figure in what was intended to be a David and Goliath story completely turned me off. Still, I grade reality on a different curve and to compare this to the dreck in scripted programming is apples and oranges, hence merely a dishonorable mention.
5 – Welcome to the Family (NBC)
This could have easily been any number of other lousy generic family comedies that NBC was praying would beam into more houses than their critically acclaimed shows, but the tie goes to the one that lasted a meager three episodes before getting yanked for whatever NBC decides to put in the 8:30 slot in a given week to patch the rest of the fall. While the initial concept wasn’t too awful (teen gets knocked up and the two families are forced to come closer together), the combination of unfortunate implications and generally uninspired execution killed this show deader than Welcome to the Family killed my ability to laugh for a half hour.
4 – Do No Harm (NBC)
Get used to seeing the peacock’s name on this list because we’re not done with Bob Greenblatt’s numerous missteps this year. Do No Harm was an incredibly weak mid-season offering that tried to bring the Jekyll and Hyde drama into a modern setting. However, since Hyde wasn’t that well differentiated from our Jekyll half (or Grey’s Anatomy for that matter) the end result was a boring product that got sent to the Saturday night death slot after two episodes. Even the series ending twist that the more villainous side was our central character’s true nature felt forced and it’s for the best this show saw a quick mercy killing.
3 – Cult (CW)
Cult gets away with being slightly lower on the list than our next two entries on the basis that it almost enters “so bad it’s good” territory. The weakest of our serial killer crop, Cult relied on wooden acting, a ludicrous script, and an obsession with overly dark camera work that kept the viewer from seeing everything. Sadly, the truly worst conceit the show tried to pull was the notion that a CW show would generate the sort of the viewership and fan obsession that would make directioners look sane, measured, and understated by comparison.
2 – Dads (FOX)
How is this show still on the air? Moreover, how on earth did Fox give it a back-order? This show is dreck on every conceivable level. The writing is sloppy and borders on every-ist in the book. This is made even worse by the sloppy execution of the script and the soulless mugging (reminiscent of a bad Jim Carrey impression) of Giovanni Ribisi and Seth Green. What truly makes Dads getting a full 22 inexplicable, however, is the fact that it’s literally dragging down the rest of the FOX comedy block (which is actually pretty good, and in terms of quality might be the strongest of the big four– rivaled only by ABC) in the ratings, meaning that whatever leverage Seth McFarlane has over FOX executives could easily sink Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Mindy Project as well.
1 – Ready For Love (NBC)
At the top of this article I mentioned that I tried to lay off the reality genre as much as possible for this article (based on the amount of reality I watched I could easily have made an all reality all-worst). However, Ready For Love tried so desperately to cross three or four different genres of shows, so I’m breaking my own rule for the purposes of this list.
As bad as NBC has been developing comedies this year (they were 0 for 7 last year, and I anticipate another 0 for 3 in the fall), they’ve been equally awful in developing event shows. Million Dollar Quiz, as much as the game show junkie in me enjoyed, slowly devolved into a fiasco, with power outages, bad weather, and bad math (they had to juice the pot by about $300,000 in order to come through on their advertising). However, MDQ had nothing on Ready For Love, which wanted so desperately to mash-up The Bachelor and The Voice. Ready For Love was boring, cliched, a slog (there was definitely not two hours of material for that premiere) and worst of all, for a show about love, it showed precisely zero heart. An unmitigated disaster all around, and not even in a way that you could redeem the show as being cheeky about it’s lousiness, Ready For Love was really the worst new show of 2013.
Next Time: Next Monday we look at the best new shows of the year, as networks scramble to reclaim former glory and cable tries to hold the fort against massive losses in the upcoming year.
With no new premieres between now and the end of the year, I’m taking this opportunity to look back on 2013. 2013 in many ways felt like a transitional year on television with old standbys leaving the air (30 Rock, Breaking Bad, How I Met Your Mother), surprise returns (Arrested Development)and new shows looking to fill those spots in the public consciousness (The Bridge, The Americans).
Speaking of that public consciousness, it always seems like a handful of shows have a tendency to get the most ink spilled about them, the most mentions on people’s twitters and Facebook walls, and the most water cooler talk. Needless to say, the shows below are the ones I think tended to come up in conversations the most this year.
Honorable Mentions: The Walking Dead (AMC), Dexter (Showtime), Under the Dome (CBS)
The Walking Dead and Dexter seem to always generate a lot of chatter, but it seems like both really lacked the visceral punch that episodes of many of the shows above it seemed to possess. Under the Dome conversely, was the most hyped new summer premiere for the major networks, but seemed to lose a lot of it’s steam over the course of the season for reasons both internally and externally.
5 – Game of Thrones (HBO)
Game of Thrones is the sort of show that I feel typically gets lumped in with the honorable mention category with the other genre shows I mentioned above. The key difference is, while it was an overall slow season for GoT, the Red Wedding episode generated an unbelievable amount of buzz. Toss in the usual string of Emmy buzz, and you have a genre show that managed to garner a lot of attention over the course of the year.
4 – The Following (Fox)
The Following makes the list this year solely on the hype it received prior to it’s January debut. During the 2012-13 Winter lull, there were a surprisingly high amount of people who were excited because Kevin. Bacon. Is Doing. TV. While the show itself ended up tapering off over time due to ludicrous plot twists and the fact that the show’s main allure came from it’s star, the initial hype was staggering during what was a relatively quiet winter season.
3 – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC)
While Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has taken a fairly sizable hit in the ratings since it’s debut, it also happens to be the single most hyped show of the fall. This is in part because it hit all of the hype check marks: fits with the movie universe (check), super showrunner Joss Whedon had a heavy hand in it (check), and ABC burned it’s entire Tuesday to the ground to rebuild around it (check). While the show itself is dangerously close to flopping, I can think of a decent number of my close friends who had this date circled on their calendar since may.
2 – Arrested Development (Netflix)
2013 was a truly brutal year for the sitcom, and one of the few bright spots on the year was the return of Arrested Development. While House of Cards may have been Netflix’s first show, it was pretty clear from minute one that the streaming giant’s future (and credibility) was built around betting big on something the show’s cult following has demanded for years: new Arrested Development. The show itself delivered fairly well even if it’s new structure felt uneven at times and Netflix ended up receiving a lot of new subscribers.
1 – Cult (CW)
No series had it’s fans going as far to protect it in the ratings as Cult. The CW had a massive hit on their …just kidding.
The show that dominated pop culture the most in 2013 was very clearly:
1 – Breaking Bad (AMC)
This was truly Breaking Bad’s year. Vince Gilligan and crew managed to do a difficult task that numerous other pantheon shows failed to do: stick the landing. This season was so well executed and so strongly hyped that Facebook would essentially go dark on Sunday nights and spoilers would often draw the ire of most (if not all) of your friends, neighbors, and family. The execution and hype were so strong that it single-handedly killed Dexter’s mojo (numerous articles were posted about how Dexter so thoroughly blew it’s last season compared to Breaking Bad) and the comparison even leeched out to broadcast TV, where the only peep heard about Under the Dome after it’s mid season run was the fact that Dean Norris had two characters die within a week. It won Best Drama at the Emmys, it drew the most attention online (three months later and Peter Foy’s reviews here still trickle into our top posts), and it generated the most buzz at the viewer level. The pop culture landscape has a huge hole to fill in 2014 without it.
Next Time: Later this week we look at the new shows this year that made my stomach turn the most as we look back at the worst of 2013.
And so, as the bruised and battered shoppers from across the fifty holiday-engorged states made their way back to their homes and questionable leftovers, a new beast lay in waiting behind their inauspicious computer monitors and tablets. The Monday after the turkey and gravy fest, and after the menacing crowds and monsters of Black Friday, is the latest great opportunity to present consumers with yet more ridiculous sales and deals – all now available conveniently within the safety of their own homes. It was Cyber Monday. Shopping online was madness. At nightfall the internet sat in the corner of the shower and wept. One phrase surely graced more computer monitors than on any other given day throughout the year: This Site is Temporarily Down.
Cyber Monday is a fairly recent cultural phenomenon. It began in 2005. A press release was conducted by the company Shop.org, publicly stating that the Monday following Thanksgiving was quickly becoming one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. This was based on the numbers of the previous year: The monday following Thanksgiving had been in the top 12 busiest online shopping days of 2004. Shop.org decided to attempt throwing the e-commerce community on the Black Friday bandwagon. It worked. That Cyber Monday saw record numbers: numbers which have increased annually since.
This year broke a new record, pushing online sales over the 2 billion dollar mark in a single day. $2.29 billion dollars to be exact.
Cyber Monday Profits
2006 – $610,000,000
2007 – $730,000,000
2008 – $846,000,000
2009 – $887,000,000
2010 – $1,028,000,000
2011 – $1,251,000,000
2012 – $1,465,000,000
2013 – $2,290,000,000
In contrast, sales for the 2013 Black Friday weekend went down for the first time in seven years. Falling 2.9% from last year’s sales, this year saw 57.4 billion dollars in profits for the weekend. That is a significant pullback considering the numbers had been on the rise every year since 2006. Last year saw 59.1 billion dollars in sales.
The most evident thought-process to be reached by these numbers is right in front of us: everything is moving into the digital age. Cyber Monday was not only successful – it was phenomenal. It wasn’t just the computers either. A whopping 18.3% of online sales were found and processed using tablets and smart phones. Cyber Monday is becoming easier to do, so naturally the numbers are rising. Black Friday is a time-honored and kind of scary tradition, sure, but why chance being flattened to the ground by high-tops and pumps in front of a Walmart when you can sit in your pajamas and work those index-finger muscles?
It’s not perfect yet. There were, as there always are, some technical problems while dealing with the massive number of visitors on e-commerce sites. Several sites did crash due to an overload of volume, including Motorola, Toys’R’Us, Urban Outfitters, Brookstone, Nordstrom, and Barnes & Noble. While most of these companies were back online within a few minutes, they potentially lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in their absence.
If there is a moral to the story that was Black Cyber Weekend, it must be that, well, we’re all a bunch of greedy and impatient barbarians, and the machines will soon be taking over.
Sources: Wikipedia.org, Business Insider, Bloomberg News
When looked at from a business perspective, Black Friday is anything but negative. The fourth friday of November, specifically the day after the American Holiday of Thanksgiving, is easily and consistently the busiest and most profitable shopping day of the year. Where many retailers might be “in the red” (pertaining to sales, in-the-red refers to a business not turning a profit, but instead losing money), Black Friday serves as a jump-start to the season where these businesses can move their sales “into the black” (turning a profit) – and then some. It’s true – the deals and the steals are an attractive and magnetic aspect of bulb-flashing and glitzy persuasion, if not coercion. Yet at some point in the rise of the blackness of that single day we seem to have lost sight of what it’s all for. Sure, you can cry recession: We’re all trying to save as much money as we can nowadays, and Black Friday serves as the opportunity to do just that while expertly amassing the perfect collection of gifts for our loved ones. And yet, is it all worth it? The camping overnight, clamoring, clawing and bickering? The arguing, belligerence, and warmongering mobbing? Does the gift of giving hold its purpose when we lose ourselves to achieve it?
The origin of Black Friday is not completely known. It has been referenced on several different occasions throughout recent history. The earliest known coining of the term occurred in the late nineteenth century during the Financial Crisis of 1869. During the Grant Presidency, the event was named, quite aptly, “Black Friday” – imputing the somber darkness of the term with the desolation of such a crisis. The term was not used specifically as a description for the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy until the year 1961, in which it can be argued that the current use of the phrase originated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The police departments in Philadelphia began to call the day after Thanksgiving “Black Friday” in regards to the terrifically obnoxious volume of overcrowding, traffic jams, chaos and crimes which did occur on that day every year. The Friday known as black held its title, and a gradual spread of the adjective quickly erupted. Soon it was a household date. Soon the department stores began to use it to their advantage.
It did not take long for major retailers to realize the full potential of what Black Friday could mean for business. There had been sales and deals on that friday long before the color graced its presence, but now there was power behind those two words. Instead of simply printing “50% off” on billboards and newspapers, retailers started to put “BLACK FRIDAY SALE” as their headline. People started paying attention. The words held a sort of ominous and dark-side implication. This drew in the crowds. Human nature took over. This wasn’t generosity-friday; this was Black Friday. This was no longer bargain shopping – this was war.
Black Friday is profitable. That much is certain. The numbers jump for consumers, small businesses, and big businesses alike. Yes, it is good for the economy. What is an economy, however, distributed among a commune of tyrants? Some may say it’s inhumane. Some may say that’s America. Both assumptions are quite correct.
Jumping back seven years, the profits from the Black Friday weekend have nearly doubled. The numbers are, in a word, astounding. Two-thousand six saw roughly 140 million shoppers grace the malls and department stores on Black Friday, each consumer spending an average of $360.00 dollars. Last year’s 2012 Black Friday saw about 247 million shoppers, each spending a much improved average of $423.00 dollars. Below are the total gross profits in billions, yes billions, each Black Friday weekend since 2006:
Black Friday weekend profits
2006 – $34.4 billion
2007 – $34.6 billion
2008 (U.S. Recession) – $41 billion
2009 – $41.2 billion
2010 – $45 billion
2011 – $52.5 billion
2012 – $59.1 billion
Clearly, the number rises significantly each year. It can be called astonishing that in the midst of a global recession period during 2008, the country as a whole still traveled in droves to spend money on the biggest friday of the year. Some may call this positive and patriotic; others might call it irresponsible and greedy.
The numbers for 2013’s Black Friday have not yet been accurately reviewed, but given the trend of the chart, it can be assumed that this year topped over 60 Billion dollars in sales.
Update: In fact, for 2013 the sales went down. Total in-store sales topped-off at 57.4 billion dollars, while cyber monday sales rose significantly.
Where there is Black Friday, there is violence. That has become the norm; that has come to be expected. Each year there seem to be more reports of growing violence and tragic accidents as a result of the mobbing crowds of the holiday weekend. Where there is an expectation of joy and giving, there is bloodshed.
Unruly shoppers charge into stores as soon as they are opened. They trample. People are injured. Stores present gimmicks, like dropping coupons from the ceiling once their doors open. And in moments like those, people seem to lose a piece of the humanity they claim to be shopping for. They charge at the idea of a discount without a second glance at what or who stands in their way.
In 2008, a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York opened its doors for business sharply at 5:00am. The crowd of over 2,000 people charged the doors like a stampede, killing a 34 year-old employee in the process. Two others were needlessly shot to death over a product altercation in California that same friday.
In 2010 there were multiple stabbings, arrests, and another trampling of a man in Buffalo, New York.
In 2011 there was a violent pepper spray incident pertaining to an altercation over the new Xbox 360. A man in California was shot.
In 2012 several people were shot, some over a parking space.
And this year was no exception to the curse of the friday known as black. On Thanksgiving evening, as it has become the beginning of the shopping frenzy recently, an alleged shoplifter dragged a police officer from his car while trying to escape in Illinois. The assailant was shot. In Las Vegas, a thief took a TV from a man who had just purchased it. While trying to retrieve the television, the victim was shot in the leg. There were multiple scuffles at stores across the country (especially Walmarts) involving several stabbings, fights and small crowd riots.
In Minnesota a man named Serge Vorobyov, who wanted to give cheer during Black Friday, dropped 1,000 one-dollar bills down to a crowd on the Rotunda of the Mall of America. It quite literally was snowing money. The crowd, in a disorderly fashion of course, went crazy for the money. Vorobyov was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
And in Philadelphia, where the entire Black Friday culture is thought to have originated, two women were caught on cell phone video fighting violently after an argument escalated. It seemed to be like any other Black Friday scuffle – one of many emerging amateur videos catching the instigators in the act – until one woman suddenly pulled out and began to use a taser gun. A security guard quickly broke up the fight – a potentially deadly fight which took place mere feet from a baby in a stroller.
So where do we stand? Where does society go from here? It can be said that the overall goal and purpose of Black Friday is to create a win-win circumstance for both the consumer and the nation’s economic well-being. And yet each year, as profits grow, so does the bloodshed. Are those who are injured or even killed simply “casualties of war” in the skirmishes that we create? No. That’s absurd. This isn’t a war. No bargain, whether it be a 20% or 100% discount, is worth the price of blood on our hands.
It is important to note that with each year, overcrowding and needless arguments are not the only problem on Black Friday. Robbery is an escalating trend. It’s not enough for some people to have the advantage of mega-deals and bargains for the items they seek. They want everything for nothing. Black Friday, with its growing reputation for irresponsibility and lack of morality, is becoming an open-door of opportunity to thieves and criminals. And rest assured – those things they do steal are not going under anybody’s tree as gifts.
It’s very simple. The only thing we still lack on Black Friday is patience. Nothing is worth violence or hatred toward another human. Nothing that comes in a box is worth letting yourself become a monster for a single day. You may not get that last big-screen TV for your husband, but you will be there on Christmas Day. And that still must be the most important gift we can give. And the good news – it’s completely free.
Now that I’ve had the opportunity to complete my playthrough of Knack, I think it’s high time that I give it a proper review. Knack was developed in-house by Sony as an answer to those wanting new entries in the Ratchet & Clank series or similar titles. It serves as the Playstation 4’s kid-friendly foray into the blend of action and platforming at launch, and also is a nice break from all the shooters that have come out alongside the platform. Is it a good game, though? Yes and no.
Story – Knack begins with a meeting of the minds, of sorts. It follows the stories of Doctor Vargas, who was responsible for the creation of the eponymous protagonist, Knack; Lucas, the Doctor’s assistant; and Ryder, the poor man’s Indiana Jones who is also Lucas’s uncle. Other pertinent characters include Viktor, a shady executive whose love of robotics and high-tech weaponry has powered his empire; Katrina, Viktor’s head of security and femme fatale; and Charlotte, the Doctor’s former lover, presumed dead after falling into an abyss twenty years prior to the game’s occurrence. At the outset of the game, you’re told that the goblins are a prime threat to human cities and settlements and that they must be stopped, which is where we meet the cast and see them discuss the best course of action. The story then shifts to Viktor being an evil son of a gun, and then it kind of gets disjointed from there. There are thirteen “chapters” to the game’s story, yet by the middle of chapter five it felt like endgame. After that, it was a series of buildups to potentially major encounters with little to no payoff. You do eventually get to battle one of the main villains, but the final boss of the game is almost completely unexplained. If you were fighting Viktor’s minions, you’d reach a point where a fight against Viktor and/or Katrina would be teased heavily, only to have them run away with their tails between their legs before a cut to the next chapter. There is a rather significant plot twist in the second half of the game that was fairly well-executed, but the overall body of work with the story is marred by a number of unexplained events and plot holes. Since I’d like to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, I won’t mention specifically what happens, but you can find a video with all the cutscenes edited together here.
Story Grade: D+
Gameplay – Knack plays like your typical action platformer, except on a more linear scale than most. Nearly every level in the game is set on a clearly defined path from start to finish, so you’ll never get lost or forget where you need to go. As far as level design goes, those are really the only positives about linearity. With so little room for exploration aside from a few breakable walls and secret rooms, I felt at times that Knack was more about working my way through the mobs to the end of the level than exploring and taking in the beautiful visuals that were created for this title. That’s one of the biggest issues this game has; playing a video game should never feel like work. Another gripe I have with the game is the controller mapping. Knack has three basic maneuvers: he can jump (X button), punch (square button, can be pressed repeatedly to string together hits), and evade (moving the right stick). As a veteran of shooting games, I find it aggravating when I can’t jump and aim, which are typically on the bottom face button and right stick, respectively, in a fluid motion. Evading is awkward enough in its own right, especially because the timing is tough to nail down and you aren’t granted any additional invincibility frames while you’re stuck recovering, which means that other enemies on the field can still hit you. Potentially the largest issue with the controller setup is the fixed camera. With nothing else mapped to the shoulder buttons, it’s inexcusable that there is no way to rotate the camera. This is 2013, people. Having moments in the heat of battle when enemies drop in the foreground, obscuring my character, with no way to remedy that except to jump over them and possibly take a hit in the process is highly unforgiving.
Knack can collect sunstone to unleash one of three special abilities by pressing the O button followed by O again, square, or Δ. These serve to quickly clear the area of enemies if you’re in a tight spot, but for me they were used more for breaking the monotony of the “punch everything” system when I didn’t feel like fighting a mob. Tying into the sunstone feature is the checkpoint system. If you die, and trust me, you’re going to die a lot in this game, sunstone does not revert to what it was at when you hit the last checkpoint. This works two ways: the positive is that you can sort of grind sunstone through dying a bunch, eventually giving you enough to use a super move and clear the fight that you were having trouble with; however, the opposite side of the coin is that should you use some of your meter on a super move and then die anyway, you’re stuck grinding it out again unless you can prevail without it. This brings me to another issue I take with the gameplay, which is that due to how quickly Knack dies no matter how big he gets, the name of the game is memorizing attack patterns and defensive play, as opposed to instincts and skill. This type of “know your enemy” system doesn’t sit well with me, especially in a game that’s allegedly geared towards children. I don’t know what types of kids they’re targeting with this game, but the “Normal” difficulty of Knack is plenty frustrating enough.
Gameplay Grade: D
Aesthetics – The saving grace of Knack is the graphics. With cutscenes and landscapes that could pass for a DreamWorks film, this is an impressive piece of visual artwork. The game runs smoothly, with very few slowdowns occurring from start to finish. Landscapes range from mines to mountains to forests to cities and everything in-between. Goblin enemies look like dumber and evil versions of Shrek, which actually works pretty well. The true winner in the graphical department is Knack, of course, because he has so many moving parts and his size changes rather frequently. Though it sadly has no effect on the gameplay itself aside from certain sections, the extra materials that Knack can utilize over the course of the game, whether ice, wood, metal, or crystal, are all rendered nicely and add a bit of visual flair to the game. Sunstone pickups glow and cause Knack to illuminate as well when they are broken and consumed. I keep coming back to the FMVs in the game though. They’re very well-animated, with solid voice acting and crisp sound effects. It’s a shame that they’re wasted on an inner core of a game with such little depth to it, but perhaps someday there will be a sequel that has combat equal to its animation.
Aesthetics Grade: A-
Fun Factor/Replay Value – Hardcore trophy hunters will be glad to know that there is a lot to do postgame. Subsequent playthroughs will allow players to re-open chests in secret rooms, in order to complete the many gadgets that Knack can use and also gain crystals that allow Knack to become better versions of himself. Whether or not you choose to pursue those upgrades and accolades depends on how much you enjoy the overall package here. I probably won’t be going back to Knack, not for a long while at least. This is not to say that the game is completely devoid of enjoyment, however; the game really shines when Knack grows to enormous proportions and you can run through areas while killing almost everything in one hit and flinging tanks at the opposition. I took these sections of the game as sick, twisted revenge against it for the profanity and near controller throwing it caused me, but how you enjoy these sequences is completely up to you. To summarize this section, if you don’t mind farming or grinding to obtain some power-ups and have a superhuman resistance to the mind-numbing gameplay of Knack, go nuts.
Fun Factor/Replay Value Grade: C-
Final Thoughts – I want to like Knack. I really, really do. I want it to be the Crash Bandicoot or Spyro of its generation, that seminal action platforming game that redefines a genre and gets the masses playing something other than a first-person shooter for a change. However, there simply isn’t enough here to be that game. It doesn’t do much that we haven’t already seen, and the unforgiving difficulty means that Knack isn’t the most accessible launch title in the PS4’s library. This title is yet another example of how graphics are not the most important factor in a video game’s quality. If the development team had spent even half as much time on everything else in Knack as they did on the visuals, it might have been one of the better launch titles for the Playstation 4. As it stands, it’s a beacon of mediocrity that left me very disappointed.
Final Grade: C
Platform: Playstation 4
Genre: Action/Adventure, Platforming
Players: 1-2 (co-op)
Price: $59.99
With fall premieres winding down (we’re down to the CW’s Reign, NBC’s Dracula, and whatever FOX has saved for after baseball), let’s take a moment and see how the major networks fared in a fall where every network (even CBS had question marks).
So how did the major networks fare this fall? Well it was mixed to say the least with each network having some success on their schedule, but also with a number of unanswered question marks in the schedule remaining that way, this will become quite apparent as we break things down network by network.
ABC: ABC seemed to have one of the more ambitious strategies for the new fall season, blowing up it’s Dancing with the Stars and Extreme Makeover Tuesdays in order to pave the way for new scripted material. The anchor show on that night, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been a success, holding down the number three drama slot in the ratings. The rest of the night, however, has been an unmitigated disaster with the comedy hour struggling, and Lucky 7 registering so nonexistently on everyone’s radar that the show got the dubious honor of being the first show axed of the year (two episodes in, typically reserved for the Do No Harms of the world). I wonder if part of this is scheduling related, as it seems weird to pair up a show that will likely do well with males 18-49 with a two family comedies and a slice of life drama and expect audiences to stay from your massively hyped lead in. Elsewhere on the schedule, ABC has had a number of flops including Once Upon A Time in Wonderland (doing horribly in the ratings) and Super Fun Night.
CBS: The last remaining network juggernaut maintains that position for another year, and does so again on the back of it’s veteran series. However, it too struggled with it’s newer offerings (almost all of which were comedies this year). We Are Men also received a two-and-out, The Crazy Ones is bleeding viewers week to week, and Mom’s numbers have not been particularly successful. There has been one new success story for CBS, however, and it comes in the form of the Will Arnett vehicle The Millers, which takes full advantage of its’ Big Bang Theory lead in. While the Tiffany network seems in very strong shape in the short term, it can not be pleased with its’ long term picture.
FOX: Fox continues what seems to be a major trend across all four networks this year: success on the drama front, with serious questions on the comedy side of the schedule. While Sundays continue to chug along with the Animation Domination block, we can already see that Seth McFarlane’s cache is starting to run out of steam with the network. American Dad is being scuttled off to TBS, The Cleveland Show saw the cancellation ax last year, and his new offering Dads feels like an unmitigated disaster. Unfortunately, that poison has run all the way through Fox’s Tuesday comedy block, as freshman Brooklyn Nine-Nine and sophomore The Mindy Project both also have sagging ratings on Tuesdays (this is a shame, as I particularly like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and feel it got hurt by drawing Agents as direct competition). However, Fox has succeeded in shoring up its’ dramas, adding Sleepy Hollow as a success story as it has already been renewed for a second season (no back-order however in order to make room for The Following).
NBC: Last year, NBC looked for success by following a strong two prong strategy: using The Voice to set up successful dramas, and making it’s comedy as lifeless and watered down as possible in order to reboot the line-up. The drama prong, succeeded, while the comedy side ended with every new show getting canceled and the network relying on decidedly not generic Community and Parks and Recreation to hold the fort for another year. This year, they went back to the same well– with the same results. The Blacklist, which followed The Voice on Mondays scored the first back-order of the year while the comedy block is once again in shambles. Parks and Recreation, thrown to the wolves against the Big Bang Goliath is down in the ratings, while The Michael J. Fox show is the only other show averaging above a 1.0. The biggest hole however, is at 8:30, where Welcome to the Family failed to be welcomed into America’s homes and is effectively on death watch until NBC can pull Community (which has quickly turned into NBC’s Rules of Engagement as a show that solely gets renewed to plug holes) from the bench to stabilize ratings. Regardless, after the past two years, I wouldn’t be surprised to see NBC try something new next year, possibly swapping it’s comedy Thursday with it’s drama Wednesday to hold the fort, because this is not a sustainable business model for the peacock.
The CW: It seems weird that the network I have to most to say positively about is the CW. While this may in fact be because they do not have a single comedy on their fall schedule (did I mention this has been a particularly atrocious year for comedy?), I think it’s predominantly because they know what they’re aiming for and one of the stronger premieres of the season in The Tomorrow People. Their other big debut, Reign hits Thursday (i’ll be reviewing it here at Manhattan Digest, likely will be up Friday afternoon), so theoretically the CW gets an incomplete, but is already miles ahead of where they were last spring when they stuck us with Cult.
Scene: Steam room of your local gym after a long workout. You are tired, sweaty, sore, and ready to take a nice relaxing trip into the steam room before taking a cooling shower and heading back out into the real world. You step into the steam room; you’re towel wrapped around your waist, and in my case, mentally getting pissed at whoever bought such small towels. [Read more…] about Things David Hates: Steam Room Edition, Volume 1
