- Share This Post
- 3
- submit
- 9
-
Sparkle (0)
This post has been a long time coming. In fact, it's been so long in coming that I almost don't want to attempt it for fear of not doing the subject justice. The question, posed to me by my BlogHer editor, "What was it like to work for Television Without Pity?" is a large one. It's not a loaded question, as some might think, it's just large.
If people are reading this in the hopes I'll spill great wadges of dirt and gossip about the popular "Spare the snark, spoil the networks" site, they're going to be disappointed. You can argue that there's dirt and gossip to be found in any company, but I'm not interested in looking for it. Dirt and gossip has nothing to do with my nine years of working for the Mighty Big TV/Television Without Pity crew.
Were we all rolling in recapping dough? No. Am I going to tell you what we were paid? See previous answer. With Mighty Big TV/Television Without Pity, it wasn't about the money. It was about getting to sit on your couch and yell at the TV. It was about being paid any amount to write bitchy and snarky. It was about finding a community that loved to hate bad TV as much I as I did. It was about writing alongside a slew of writers who kept me in a state of constant awe of their sheer comedic talent.
It was the best job I ever had.
In the beginning, we were Mighty Big TV, and we were comparatively small. Small enough, in fact, that I managed to watch every single show we covered, as well as find the time to bash-hug said shows in every single forum. Sure, that meant I was still watching an inordinate amount of TV, but not as much as I would have been if I was watching ALL the shows the site was covering in, say, 2007.
It was 1999 and there was a lot of awesome bad TV happening. My personal plot of bad TV -- that I nurtured with seeds of snideness and watered with withering contempt -- was a Party of Five spin-off starring everyone's favorite Ghost Whisperer and eyelash aficionado, Jennifer Love Hewitt. Time of Your Life lasted all of 12 episodes before the U.S. market pulled the plug. (A reader from New Zealand sent me a VHS tape of two additional episodes that aired down there. After getting the go-ahead from my editor, I plunked down a couple of bills to convert the tape and I recapped that damn show. Because that's how much I loved to hate it.)
However, what ended up being crucial to my development as a writer was that in those early years, I wasn't simply able to post in every forum, I was also able to read every single recap. When I started my recapping gig at Mighty Big TV/Television Without Pity, I was just starting to build my freelance writing portfolio. I hadn't written much and what I did write for the Boston Globe's wedding section wasn't that great, but it was a start.
Television Without Pity taught me how to write. From my editors and fellow recappers, I learned how to craft elegant jokes, using an economy of words. I also noted the power of word choice, and the impact of hilarious hyperbole. I didn't just stop at recap reading, either. For a number of years, I pored obsessively over my own published recaps. I'd print out the version I sent to my editor and compare it to the edited version. I'd note every change to punctuation or sentence structure and mentally file it away. I'd analyze how my editor tightened something rambling and expunged parallel construction issues.
I was totally OCD about it, but I did it because I was obsessed with Getting It Right and not troubling my editors with the same mistakes again. I'm certain I drove those long-suffering editors nuts by querying certain changes. And it wasn't because I disagreed with their edits, I really, honestly wanted to understand why the change was made. It wasn't until later that I realized I wasn't just getting too-long-delayed lessons in grammar and syntax, I was also learning how to write tight and funny. I was learning how comma placement could affect impact and how poor grammar could undermine or destroy a joke or argument.
It's not that I couldn't write before I
