The Sopranos
The Sopranos is finishing up its sixth and final season and it's riveting television. It grabs you because the plot is completely subordinate to character. The web is full of speculation about who gets whacked, but everyone is arguing within the framework of the Soprano's World. It takes some pretty fine writing and directing to get millions of viewers to buy into this setup...like a Godfather or Apocalypse Now movie that keeps going on beyond the first three hours.
Can the Internet ever do this? Well, yes. In theory, the Internet is way better suited for this kind of deep character submersive entertainment than TV ever was. There are three reasons that the Internet is fundamentally superior to television for an immersive experience:
Linking
On the Internet, you can link information, which allows the viewer to choose the "focal depth" of the information, chasing the nitty and gritty as deep or shallow as they wish.
Time-Shifting.
The Internet can also be a time machine, because it does not have to play sequentially from the beginning to the end. For instance, a web-based show (non-streaming), could be restored to a particular "state" of time by the viewer, similar to hitting the pause key on a Tivo.
Collaboration.
One last thing that the Internet could do quite well would be to apply social networking or collaboration to entertainment. I believe that American Idol is a primitive beginning of collaborative entertainment.
I look forward to the first Sopranos on the Web.
Posted on April 25, 2007
