Strictly Formula/Quotes

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"With the Casper series, you never knew what picture you were working on, because they were all exactly the same." —Lee Mishkin, a Famous Studios animator summing up the Casper the Friendly Ghost shorts in a nutshell.

"I think the problem lay in the attitude of the management. The bosses would go to screenings with a list of all the gags in a film on a clipboard. They'd put a check after each gag that got a laugh and use it in the next picture. If a gag got a laugh in three pictures in a row, it became a standard and they'd use it in every picture after that. They had a real nuts-and-bolts approach to making films." —Lee Mishkin, stating why Famous Studios shorts were so formuliac.

Formularisation is compulsory in commercial TV, and has struck STTNG hard. The NCC1701D now has less time than ever to explore strange new worlds - half the season is prebooked for return visits to the Klingons or Cardassians, and guest spots for Barclay, Ma Troi, Q, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. Not that I want to see any fewer Romulan Warbirds, Borg motherships etc; I just regret this inevitable loss of novelty in favour of the kind of petty continuity that STTOS tried so hard to avoid. —Justin B. Rye. Star Trek: Mark Two

"This is not chaos," Martin insists. "I don't believe in chaos in songwriting. There is an order to it. It either makes sense or it doesn't. This chord goes into this chord for a chorus. It's two plus two." Cloud defends a similar position. "We both to this day still feel there is really no 'art' in most music," he asserts. "'Art' isn't in everything. People like to think everything is art. Arranging flowers, writing poems, making a latte--these are just actions, not art. Plugging in an electric guitar, playing four chords, adding bass and drums, and singing words in key is no more 'art' than a guy opening his tool box, putting on a 9/16 socket, replacing a belt, and getting the lawn mower running again." —Matt Johnson interviewing Starflyer 59, Bandoppler, "The Cool War"

Ass: OH NO! Look who it is! Musty: It's Team Rockhead, of course! They show up EVERY episode! Ass: Yes, but they usually show up six minutes into the show! This time, they didn't show up until six minutes and twenty seconds! Messy (entering): Ha! Never underestimate the element of surprise! —Mad Magazine, "Hokéycon"

'They really are all the same, aren't they?' she said to the three-eyed teddy bear. 'You know it's going to be Mary the Maid, or someone like her, and there's going to be two men and she will end up with the nice one, and there has to be misunderstandings, and they never do anything more than kiss and it's absolutely guaranteed that, for example, an exciting civil war or an invasion by trolls or even a scene with any cooking in it is not going to happen. The best you can expect is a thunderstorm.' —Glenda Sugarbean, Unseen Academicals

The first episode of Pokémon that aired on network TV was episode #42, "The Problem with Paras." There are over 700 Pokemon episodes in existence now, so you might not remember this particular one. It's the one where they go somewhere and meet a Pokemon with a problem, and the gang tries to solve that problem, and Team Rocket tries to mess it up. It's that one. —Platypus Comix, "First Kids WB airing of Pokemon"