How does serial drama earn, keep, and reward our attention for so long—over episodes, seasons, months, and years? While we know that characters are the focus of story and viewer interest in television fiction, scholars have for decades overlooked the way those characters are performed on-screen and the lure of performance as a key formal and thematic aspect of long-form television storytelling. In Over and Over, Elliott Logan offers close readings of performance in some of the most celebrated television dramas of the century, casting new light on the attractions and significance of the medium’s seriality. The book shows how the patterning and expressive resonance of performers on-screen binds together otherwise unconnected episodes of shows like The Sopranos and Mad Men. In doing so, it highlights the provisionality of identity and meaning as crucial to their interest in the sustenance of human relationships over long periods of time. In accounting for the resonance of performance over time in serial drama, this book shows, we find the terms of our own attachment to its compelling depictions of human life
“Over and Over establishes Elliott Logan as one of our most perceptive, sensitive, and incisive critics of the screen arts. This book is a bold and powerful assertion of the value of appreciative criticism in the face of its marginalization within television studies and broader society.”
“With care and precision in every line, Logan deftly persuades the reader that human performance is the pinnacle achievement of television drama and central to understanding its power. Logan’s fluent and expressive writing enriches the American masterpieces that he chooses, as critical eloquence illuminates acting prowess. This book is a triumph of television studies.”
“A superb contribution to television aesthetics. Through exquisite close readings of The Sopranos, Homeland, and Mad Men, Logan shows how a standing emphasis on serial accumulation needs to be counterbalanced by a recognition of provisionality: of transient narrative possibilities, of resonances that mutate over time, and of the human face as a perpetual ‘object of mystery.’”
“We ought to express our gratitude for the satisfaction and comfort of art in ways that rise to the occasion that prompted it. Logan’s wonderful and sensitive tracking of some of the finest performances on television is a model of that expression, with eloquence and intelligence that is compelling.”
Contents Preface Introduction: Beyond the Horizon 1 Lost for Words: The Challenge of Expressiveness in Serial Drama and its Criticism 2 Beyond Narrative: Expressive Echoes at the End of The Sopranos 3 Claims of Companionship: Transience and Commitment in Mad Men’s “The Phantom” 4 Faces of Allegiance: Revision and Reversal in the First Season of Homeland 5 Unspoken Bonds: Amnesia and Acknowledgement in Mad Men’s “The Suitcase” 6 Post-Script Acknowledgements Notes Index
ELLIOTT LOGAN is a lecturer in film and screen studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Breaking Bad and Dignity.
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