Color TV

[darkemeralds]

Words can hardly express how much I love the production design of Grimm and Finch's mostly-plaid wardrobe in Person of Interest.



Grimm, for all that it's been slow to find its feet, has been beautifully designed from the outset. Here's a screenshot from this week's episode. The whole ep featured these same saturated red and turquoise tones, and it was so gorgeous that it almost overshadowed the much-improved plot line by Amy Berg.



(Obscure-ish TV joke: Detective Britten wouldn't know which reality he was in!)

And Finch's overcoat was so beautiful that I couldn't take my eyes off it in this week's Person of Interest. It played a role in the plot and everything! I worried about that coat when he took it off, and I was delighted to see that he was still wearing it in the last scene. I hope it makes another guest appearance!

Comments

[cookiemom6067]

I've only watched one episodes of Grimm and it really didn't grab me, but your comment here makes me wonder about giving it another shot. Is it actually shot in/around Portland, or is it another Vancouver show?

I find most shows get it wrong when they're set in/around Kansas = Smallville sometimes provokes laughter and I get very distracted when Lawrence isn't Lawrence in Supernatural, though I do try to overlook it. There was even an episodes of SG-1 that was set in Topeka that was laughable (making it a hick town set in the midst of a wheat field instead of an honest-to-goodness city).

[darkemeralds]

Grimm is shot in Portland, as Portland. What's fun is that it plays with the whole Portland vibe--it implies, "Well, what other city in the US would be full of weird mythical creatures masquerading as humans?" Which...Portland kind of is anyway. :D

Grimm has gotten better, too. It suffered from the crippling Monster of the Week constraint until they got a full-season order and started digging into the long story arc. It's still a bit hit and miss, but I can't remember when I've seen such marked improvement in a show.

I agree with you completely about television's ridiculous portrayal of America's "exotic locales". Of course British Columbia can't be made to look like Kansas or New Mexico, and Los Angeles can't masquerade as Seattle (or New York, for that matter--I'm lookin' at you, Castle) even on its grayest day. SPN is the worst for that sort of thing! I remember one ep where Richardson, TX was a little town with trees. LOL!

And I get such a laugh out of Hollywood's "everything is down-slope from here" attitude that makes Topeka a hick town and "Oregon" a unified destination--as in "my flight to Oregon" (a sin committed this week by Awake in an otherwise terrific episode).

[cookiemom6067]

That same episode where they shrunk Richardson to a tiny hamlet in the giant pine forests of Texas, they had the boys driving on I-35 - portrayed as a two lane road. Um - Interstate? Four lane divided? By design? I thought that was unnecessarily silly. Any American seeing it (definitely Jensen!) would have pointed that out. I picture the production designer being really Ed Wood about it ("no one will ever notice that!").

The thing that makes my husband and I laugh every time is the HUGE gorges around Smallville, KS. Um, we've got some decent-sized prairie dog holes in Kansas...but...

I used to work for a consulting firm based in Parsippany, NJ - I found that insular attitude about "fly-over country" really annoying and baffling at times - an attitude shared by both coasts, it seems to me. "If you're not here, what does it matter?" I know we can be provincial, but I think they're even worse.