Reflection and Analysis

Tidelands - Analyzing a Review (4/23/2020)

"Disguising soap opera as supernatural drama, or perhaps making the point that they are not necessarily different things..."

Reading this line in the review by Luke Buckmaster titled "Tidelands review – Netflix's first Australian original is pretty but vacuous." We're talking about a review which admits that, no, Tideland's isn't the first Autralian original – that title goes to Pine Gap, but apparently that isn't enough because of the fact it was "co-produced" because they mistakenly confused ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Company) for ABC (the American Broadcasting Company).

We're talking a review which tosses out the word vacuous, which means "having or showing a lack of thought or intelligence; mindless." It's not a word many know the meaning of, yet it carries quite a bit of power because of how fancy the word is, yet this is amplified by the next part of the quote, "...the central location feels a little like a bizarro Good Place: a community sort of real and sort of not, with hierarchies and obscure protocols, managed by otherworldly being whose daily duties get bogged down by meaningless drama."

What though is a soap opera? According to TV Tropes, "a soap opera is a melodrama with a large cast experiencing dramatic events in their day-to-day lives, usually broadcast five days a week. Designed to be viewed intermittently, so that a single event may be stretched over three or more days." What though does a soap opera look like in the days of streaming?" Of course, the trope page says this is "dying" because it's no longer shown the same way as before, and that Prime Time Soap and Supernatural Soap Opera are its own separate thing, a "modern variant".

I've got to call people on this because a Prime Time Soap is "a serialized drama that's like a daytime Soap Opera but shown in the evening" which means the only difference is when the show is aired, which to me sounds like a rather discriminative way to say "this is a soap opera and this is not" because both are soaps, particularly when one realizes that British and Australian soaps don't have these kinds of time constraints. The Supernatural Soup Opera is just the genre with fantastical elements thrown in.

In truth, we're talking about the Slice of Life genre and Americans being Americancentric in their view of the genre, though in this particular case Luke Buckmaster is an Australian reporter who... let's just say there is quite a bit of snobbery regarding the genre, that it's a woman's thing which should be categorized into what is or isn't considered acceptable. I'm writing this as I'm getting into the third episode of Tidelands and my thoughts are – well, the review is off.

Actually, the whole point of combining the two genre is to capture the melodrama in the life of a supernatural being, yet this is the very thing they're saying doesn't work for the show despite this being the very defining thing of what a Supernatural Soap Opera is, so I'd further argue – look, if this is not your cup of tea genre wise, back off. Don't criticize the genre for being what it is, because that just reeks of entitled snobbery, but I'm tired of men saying girls aren't allowed to enjoy anything but Romance and Slice of Life.

I'm talking about the fact most of the works produced for females are either pure romance and/or Slice of Life with no sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural, mystery, historical, etc. elements mixed in because – wow, those genre are for men, so how dare a show be made for women that mixes a genre not for men, aka romance and/or Slice of Life dare be mixed into something which is a genre for men. I'm not saying this will have an awesome ending – I may add an edit to this once I do finish Tidelands, but the point here is the review is a bunch of snobbery.