Figgy's List of Grievances. Today: TWOP's Jacob.

Jacob is one of the writers who does tv-show episode recaps on TelevisionWithoutPity.

I love TWOP. Always have. Most of their reviewers are insightful, and it's a good way to catch little details you might've missed in a show.

But oh, I hate Jacob. Have you seen his recaps? I stopped reading the American Idol ones because he started doing them. Same thing with his Gossip Girl recaps I also stopped watching Americal Idol and Gossip Girl years ago, but that doesn't matter here). I went to the site today to see what TWOP had to say about True Blood--a trashy, addictive show I just started watching. And then I found out Jacob was doing the recaps. I went "grrrr" and closed the site.

OK, before I closed it I tried reading. I did. I gave him another chance.

Then I realized each of his recaps is THIRTY PAGES LONG (a 45 minute show, for frak's sake!). THIRTY PAGES of his rambling, incoherent rants that are only 10% actual scenes from the SHOW and 90% filler that seems fueled by one or more hallucinatory drugs. Oh, Sookie is angry? Let me not only say that she's angry, but write a 2 page treatise on the origins of anger, the consequences of anger, the love of anger that makes no sense at all and makes me sound like a pretentious idiot who loves to hear himself talk.

Here's an example:

"Hey, Tara! This is Randi Sue. Come join us. It's beautiful!" And it is. The world is sufficiently big that nobody holds anything against anybody else, because we are one. The sparks in the magnolia and the sparks just across Randi Sue's skin, you can see them: they are the same. What need is there to feel alone ever again, to try to fuck your way across the line, when you've discovered the secret of the universe is that you're already across the line. And they are in you, and you two are only parts of the universe meeting in a kiss, and saying in your pleasure, "I remember you. Welcome home."

Excuse my language here but:

What the HELL does any of that even mean?

NOTHING. Big fat load of NOTHING.

And it's not only a nonsensical, pseudo-philosophical, oh-look-at-how-profound-I-am bout of nonsense, it's also BAD WRITING. Just awful writing. How does this man keep working?

Do your job, Jacob. Your job is to do a run down of the episodes, and add helpful, relevant commentary every now and then. The recap should be about the SHOW, not about YOU. And you are making it all about you. For THIRTY pages. Thirty pages of you trying so desperately hard to be profound that the reader is left hating your guts for being unable to write a single, simple sentence without going into a three-page ramble.

Just stop it.

Alright, I didn't mean for this to go on this long but...this has been eating at me for a long time, and seeing Jacob get more work at TWOP was just the last straw. I can't take it anymore. Somebody stop him.

Living skin, dead matter, separated by bullshit you can only see in context; all this matter and the sparks inside it are the point: they matter. They are significant and alive, whole in themselves, full of life and beauty. It's just nature, and nature's all we have.

....

NO.

Jacob...Shut. Up.

***

I wrote a second part to my rant:

http://figgylicious.blogspot.com/2009/06/figgys-airing-of-grievances-twops-jacob.html