fandomhigh | Teevee for Beginners, Wednesday

Mitchell had sprawled back in an armchair of his own today. If he looked visibly relieved to be here, well-- back home wasn't exactly pleasant at the moment.

"Today, we'll be discussing recent television," he started, "It's faster-paced than it was in the old days, cut more rapidly, making its departure from the theatre. Some say it's because our cultural attention span has gotten so short. Some say it's simply because we can absorb more information than we did previously. I'm not a scientist, I can't tell you which one it is, but I can tell you that modern standards of comedy seem to have fallen quite a bit."

"The television medium is much more scattered now. There's far more channels than in the past, when at best you'd get five or six. Now, you can watch a hundred different things or more, geared towards your tastes, wishes, and expectations. Cooking channels, comedy channels, news channels. Anything you might want to learn, anything you might want to follow, anything you might want to have fun with? It's there on the TV. Just a click of the remote away."

He went into a bit of a routine about sci-fi and fantasy channels and fiction, but it was a bit sketchy. "Science fiction and fantasy have grown popular as a genre nowadays," he said, "After a stint of being mostly ignored. Basically, they're the same kind of thing: speculative fiction. Except science fiction is about the future, and fantasy is about an imagined past. With dragons, that kind of thing." He smiled. "Then there's the sitcom. Developed back in the 50s, perfected in the 80s. Situational comedy. A cast of characters operating from the same 'situation', like a drama with jokes. It's often about the dialogue."

He pointed at the TV with the remote. "Today, we'll be watching different channels. You'll discuss what defines each and every one of them. What are the most obvious visual markers? Who does the channel seem to be geared at? Would you watch it on your own?"

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"Aren't you from some midwestern place where the sun never shines?" Mitchell's eyebrows went up.

Kate made a face at him. "Come on, we get sun in Kansas."

She just never went out in it. Big difference.

"Well, I suppose Dorothy did," he said, grinning a little. "You, on the other hand..."

"I also haven't been transported anywhere via tornado, what's your point?"

"You're pale," he said, smirking. "Admit it."

"I'm not." Well... "In comparison, I'm not all that pale."

"You want to see about that?" Mitchell asked. He was already making a big show of pulling his sleeve down. "And keep in mind you've got a certain advantage on me." What with, you know, actually having a pulse.

"I'm not as pale as you are," Kate replied, actually pretty confidently. She'd been comparing herself to Bod a lot, lately, so that might have had something to do with it.

Mitchell would have been less pale if he'd had something to drink as of recently, and he was definitely Irish.

That didn't mean he wasn't raising his eyebrows and holding his arm up higher. "Come on. Let us see that arm."

Dork.

Yes, for two people who preferred to think of themselves as pretty damn cool, this was a fairly dorky thing to do.

And they were doing it anyway.

Kate leaned down some to hold her arm next to his. She'd managed to get a tiny bit of a tan, but yeah. Midwestern pale, still.

"See? I'm totally less pale!"

"You call that less pale?" Mitchell asked, critically, and turned his arm over. "I don't think so."

"It is," Kate insisted. "Come on. It totally is."

Possibly not.

Teevee for Beginners, Wednesday

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