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Great article. Hadn't heard the specific term "medium specificity" but it's one I definitely have believed in for a while (currently embroiled in a debate over what makes good writing in a novel and like your comments on directorial flourishes, I don't think beautifully complex sentences is enough).
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the trick with medium specificity is that everything is subjective, of course, which means people will reasonably disagree on what the unique attributes of a medium even are, which is awesome!
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You also see innovation within media that changes how those attributes are weighed sometimes. It's pretty hard to pull that off and I earnestly think to redefine a genre or medium, the artist has to be highly knowledgeable about what the conventions are in order to remake them.
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Re The Bear, I agree that Storer moving a little far from tv conventions in S3 made a more experimental, but less well made show.
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to your point, the best stuff in The Bear is often the stuff that is more traditional to modern television, things you wouldn’t have seen in even the 90s, but still in a way grew out of all that development over time. people discover new attributes.
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I don't know if it's anyone's favourite episode, but the S1 one where Sydney leaves on the pre order option and it's a cascade of disasters, has a short runtime, and ends so abruptly I thought the season was done, was a good example of fucking with convention. But they can't all be like that!