Homage to The Recapper Jacob and to Television without Pity.

<<Back to introduction.

I have already said what I think about Television without Pity.  It was once a force for good on the internet and among critics of the Entertainment Industry, and it's still a force.  For awhile, there was a  whole website devoted to hating it, which shows that at a certain point it had big legs like a stone giant's and stomped all over the people who loved it the most.   I stopped posting at TWoP a couple of years ago because it occurred to me that the time I was spending trying to work out whether a post would earn me a rebuke from a moderator was time better spent on other pursuits.

But the recaps are a different matter.  There is some excellent writing to be read at TWoP.  In addition to all of Jacob's recaps, which I'm about to get to,  I'd recommend Al Lowe on Deadwood and M. Giant on Rome).  And those are in addition to the ones I particularly noted here. 

And though a lot of the early (and best) recappers have moved on, my all-time favorite of all recappers anywhere, Jacob Clifton (whose idiom is anything but generic and is his alone), remains. 

Jacob isn't merely the best of TWoP's best, in my opinion.  He's a great and completely original inimitable writer.   Though he's recapping television, often very terrible television, his writing is in the grand tradition of belles lettres, so I really don't care what he writes about; I read him to read him. 

He has a style all his own.  "Too long and I don't like his run-on sentences," sniff the prissier readers, who think the point of a recap is to find out what a show was "about," as if that couldn't normally be handled in three to four bloodless paragraphs. 

Jacob's recaps are epic, and they are about more, much more, than the "events" covered by the show or even the show's plot, characters, and story arc).  They are deeply insightful into the state of American culture (and specifically the culture of television viewing as opposed to, say, "the entertainment industry").   More generally, they are deeply insightful examinations of the human condition.  Finally, they are what I'd call (if I were a different sort of person) laugh-out-loud funny (in TWoP parlance "you owe me a new keyboard" funny).  In other words, you're unsuspectingly and wonderingly reading his trademark stream-of-consciousness commentary and then suddenly....

He's a reader's writer, i.e., a writer for someone who reads for pleasure.  At this point, I watch the shows he recaps not always for pleasure (because there is really none to be had from Season 6 of The Apprentice) but so I can better appreciate the recaps.  I watch them while I do other things, like this, because they don't matter to me except to the extent they give meaning to Jacob's recaps.  What's more, a lot of people all over the internet will say the same.

My favorite Jacob recaps are his recaps of The Apprentice, which I still watch in order to appreciate to the fullest Jacob's recaps.   For one thing, Jacob has an awe-inspiring grasp of what one of my friends calls "inferential psychology"---i.e., the careful study of the foot of Hercules in order to infer the rest.   For another, he clearly understands the principles of group psychology and group dynamics, meaning that his commentary is instructive and discerning and frequently educational.   He also has that one thing you have to be born with if you're going to have it at all:  the writer's gift for discerning the telling detail, the defining phrase.

Here are some favorite writers his headlong style has at various times reminded me of:  S.J. Perelman, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, P.J. O'Rourke (in his Rolling Stone days), and Berkeley Breathed (maybe partly because of the Texas link).  I can't explain any of these in detail, and yet they are writers with whose work I am intimately familiar.  Perhaps Perelman the most, since he wrote extensively about the pop culture of his day (and miraculously, everything he wrote is still funny and still read today).

In other words, he's a writer's writer.  You could learn a thing or two by reading his recaps.  He's certainly left his mark on me.  Again, specifically, he's made me understand how much more my writing can be doing.  His writing is built on layer upon layer of references, observations, allusions, jokes.  And what I want to know is how?  How does he do it? 

Anyway, it's time for a sample. 

It took me three weeks to write this note, mainly because---with one exception, immediately following---I just could not choose which parts of his recaps to excerpt as samples.  Samples are essential if you want to understand what I'm talking about here; but there are so many, even if you don't look beyond The Apprentice.  I am spoiled for choice.  There's an embarrassment of riches.  Except for the one which directly follows, which I have insisted on reading aloud to a number of people who don't even watch The Apprentice.

This my favorite, all-time Jacob quote.  It's from his recap of Episode 9, Season 5 of The Apprentice.  The Allie to whom he refers was a small, cute blond who reminded me of Kristin Chenoweth's character in The West Wing. She was sort of the epitome to me of the cute, popular girl who decides to run for president of the student body and editor of the campus newspaper rather than go out for cheerleader.   

[quote begins from  "Assault on Battery" (recap of Episode 9/Season 5 of NBC's "The Apprentice") by Jacob Clifton of Television Without Pity]

Allie and Roxanne agree that Sean cannot currently be trusted. Andrea tells Sean not to "trust politics," and tells him that she will "protect" him in the Boardroom. Like he needs to worry about that this week. He bites the hook anyway, because he's a dipshit, and inside, things get...amazing. It grows subtly darker in Trump Tower, and there are crashes of thunder from a sunny sky; snakes appear in shadows, under couches and behind laundry baskets, coiled and invisible to all but the most peripheral vision. The creeping vines on the wallpaper begin to grow and undulate and sprout blood-red blossoms. There are dry rustles in empty rooms, and high-pitched sighs from behind mirrors. In an upstate New York barn estate, something unnatural is born, and screams like a bald eagle before it dies. The New York harbor glows brightly for a few seconds, and becomes a few degrees warmer as shoals of fish head for the coast, fleeing something huge and vast and deep. An entire household in Queens sees itself growing old and decaying in their mirrors and family portraits, then snaps back to normal before they can scream. Down at Macy's, there is a frightening ten-minute period in which the whole place goes black, and all you can hear is the chorus of "Possum Kingdom" by the Toadies, everywhere, from the sound system and the gold-plated Versace boom boxes and from everybody's phones, in the darkness. And at Trump National, terrifying things are crawling out of the golf course holes, arms like matchsticks, claws like toenail parings, and no eyes at all.

"We will tear her apart," says Allie, and the world shivers. "It will be the ugliest Boardroom Trump has ever seen. There will be blood on the walls," she vows. She sits up, playing host to something larger than herself. Larger than any of us: "There will be blood on the walls." A smile plays at the corners of her mouth, and little skull-and-crossbones hover over her irises, which have gone all-black: "There will be fucking blood everywhere." In the darkness there is a dry chuckle, like sandpaper on an infant's skin. The deal is struck.

Here's a summary of his recap from the most recent episode.  As it happens, I didn't agree with him (or Nick) about the candidate in question---I'll call him M.--- whom I sort of liked (this is television with pity).  But the candidate happened to be a particular type of person that most people automatically don't like, and the reasons Jacob gives are exactly the reasons why they don't, even though most people could never explain it. 

So: this next paragraph spotlights Jacob's ability to mark down, target, and skewer the exact aspects of a fraudulent pose or posture assumed strictly for effect which expose it as a fraud and imposition.  After all, even though we are told we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, that's what covers are for. Furthermore, there are people who consciously adopt a way of being on which they wish to be judged.  They are the world's posturing pricks and posers.

What I like about the following is the insight into the factors that go into a person's decision to become a poseur.

[quote begins from  "To Have and Have Not," (recap of Episode One/Season 6 of NBC's "The Apprentice") by Jacob Clifton of Television Without Pity]
[T]he first thing he does is tell Trump…no, that's not the first thing he does. The first thing he does is be offensive on sight, both to my people instincts and to my sense of aesthetics. He is dressed like a motherfucking clown. He is dressed like Doctor Who. He is dressed like a man who has never been beaten up in his whole life, thanks to his Mom's valiant efforts and vicious roundhouse kick. This is exactly what he is. Remember freshman year of undergrad and there were the boys with the…like, one of them walked with a cane. He did not need this cane, or walking stick, and he did not need to wear a cocksucking cloak over his backpack either. And there was another one who wouldn't stop talking about Ayn Rand, and he always wanted to be the Dungeon Master, and it occurred to you that these things were related, and that that is heartbreaking. And there was the more attractive but still socially awkward one with a cute haircut who never got laid because he was like this. And if you observed these people as closely as I did, like from behind trees and at the parties they accidentally found out about, you soon learned two things: one is that nerd sexuality is very, very complicated, and you would do well to stay out of it altogether, because it's always going be either "polyamory," furries, or S&M, and often the Ren Faire is involved, which apparently can get expensive, but mostly: all of which are so gay you might as well just be gay, in my opinion, and save yourself the mental journey. When you're gay? You get laid like that. I'm just saying. Plus there's no extra equipment to buy. …I mean, as far as I'm aware. But anyway, the second one is that these boys also had people that they were too cool for. I mean to say that there were some people so unpalatable that they never even got to play GURPS with these boys. And those people were Martin, and he's on your TV right now! Wearing a pinstriped suit, a checkered tablecloth, a barfy and clashing tie, a simper, and the fragrance known as Eau d'Lazy Asshole. He is avant nothing at all, après the world, and illustrates my grandmother's axiom: In fashion, there is a difference, admittedly sometimes razor-thin, between
being cutting edge and fucking up on a heretofore unimagined scale.

concept of being taken seriously." Another statement that he is making, even more loudly, is this: "I am on the down-low."

[quote ends]

I don't know what GURPS might be, and I understand (or rather, "understand")  Furries only because of a link Jacob thoughtfully provided in another recap.  But I didn't need to know exactly what they are to know that this was hilarious.  It's also trenchant, of course, and perhaps unkinder to its subject than in real life he really deserves, but people who go on reality shows ought to be prepared at this stage of the genre to be cast as the characters they tend in real life to play. 

Finally---just one more is all I feel comfortable using---one from the most recent recap.  On the theory that the identities of the players don't matter at all to the quality and wit and insightfulness of the writing, I'm just going to refer to them by their initials.  Ready?  Go.

[quote begins from Drive-Thru Duel, (recap of Season 6/Episode 4 of NBC's The Apprentice) of The Apprentice by Jacob Clifton of Television Without Pity]

Outside..., A. is wagging his tail and humping things at S's approach. He interviews that he knew little about S. beyond the fact that he doesn't talk, which means he's calm and level-headed, or possibly that he is a serial killer. Just like A. Who is looking super-fine in his own right during this interview, in a lovely pink polo, cloth belt, that whole Cape Semiotics vibe he likes to work. He looks like the inside of Tommy Hilfiger's mind. Before, I mean. A. tells us that [A.'s team] needs less yelling and more not yelling, and that whatever whatever, he realizes he's in charge of a circus and so do we. S. comes upon them...and asks if they've been drinking. F. screams some unjoke about how "No of course not...but would you like a beer?" and he says no. Because nothing's a stronger deterrent to getting drunk than drunk people who got there first, especially if they're drooling morons. They chatter at him like the microcephalics at the beginning of that movie Freaks, crawling around and picking at his hair and investigating his pockets. Over the hedge -- so cute -- are [S's former teammates], sadly waving goodbye.

What follow is comedic. S. sits down with some crazy-looking napkin Mind Maps and proceeds to educate [his new team] on what it means to be a grownup, for one hundred hours: all about not screwing each other over, being open to other people's ideas, acting like this but not like that, doing this but not that, just basic shit. Which is funny, but not as funny as the fact that A) No team should have this stuff explained to them, and B) Except this team. I've never gone from meh to bleh about anybody so fast. But what's funniest of all is their reaction, which is so honestly hilarious and in character that you couldn't script this. Part of it's editing, but most of it is the truth about [this team]: they sit still for approximately five seconds, then start to fidget, then N. takes a nap, and [three others] just wander away for more booze, and the whole time he's talking, talking, talking. S. interviews that he wanted to illustrate for them "discipline" and "structure," and explains to us about how he has worked in businesses ranging on the Goldilocks scale of small entrepreneurial businesses he started, to midsize companies, to Fortune 150 companies, in case we thought he was being a dickwad. Except he totally is, because the one thing this show is still doing right is recruiting people who are already successful, regardless of what Donald Trump believes. It goes on and on. F. almost bursts into tears. Heading into the credits is an awesome shot of F. grinning around a cigar as S. goes, "Never stop, just never stop anything, just keep going and don't stop. Is this helping? I don't wanna be annoying..."

[quote ends]

This an absolute, dead-on, dead-ass on description of exactly what I saw.  It was exactly as described.  Reading the recap perfectly reminded me of my feelings while watching the actual show (which at this stage I watch so that I can read the recaps).

Isn't that amazing?  How often do you encounter something as funny as this which also nails the deeper truths about the relationships between and characters of the people who are populating your television screen.

He is, without question, the thinking/reading/writing person's recapper.  I've read all his recaps of shows that I would never, ever watch because he wrote them.

I hope Jacob eventually sets aside some time to write the ultimate first-person "fictional" narrative about someone who is exactly like him, except fictional.  I would read that book and buy copies for all my friends.

EXCELLENT ONE-OFF RECAPS AT TWoP BY JACOB (you don't need to have seen the show!):

• Throw Momma, Daddy, and Your Kids from the Double-Wide.  [Recap of Dr. Phil]
• Boys Don't Make Passes at Total Lame Asses.  [Recap of Dr. Phil]
• The Dundies and Casino Night.  [First and Last Episodes of NBC's The Office]
• Do You Believe in Magic?  [Recap of The Michael Jackson Story]
• Let's Wrinkle!  [Recap of the Disney Version of L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time]
• Gimme Shelter. [Recap of Helter Skelter]
• Just Close Your Eyes, and Think of England.  [The Mists of Avalon, Part 1]
• The Sun Never Sets on the Original TNT Movie.  [The Mists of Avalon, Part 2]

 

Comments

[badkittyuno]

I stumbled across this entry trying to find more that Jacob Clifton has written. His two recaps for The Office (especially Casino Night) are two of my absolute favorite--his style of writing is fantastic. I love M.Giant's recaps, too, but Jacob's delved so much deeper into not only the show, but culture as a whole, that I really wish he'd covered more episodes.
Your post here has inspired me to check out his recaps on other shows, even though I've never watched any of them.

[TetaZdena]

Seriously? Jacob Clifton writes (at least on TWOP) just like (and maybe is a pseudonym of) Harry Knowles - terribly. It's just a train wreck and completely unreadable. The worst kind of melodramatic florid freshman year garbage. I can't believe I'm the only person who thinks this.

[Milla]

@TetaZdena, you're not alone. I think he's fantastic when he has solid editors behind him (I adore his early BSG and several Farscape recaps) to help whittle him down to something sensible. But when left to his own devices, he rambles in a horribly pretentious fashion that many seem to confuse with brilliance just because he has a great vocabulary. Here's a hint; when you're reading one of his recaps and stumble across a word you don't recognize, look it up. More and more these days, I'm finding that he has become the malapropism king.

Additionally, someone needs to fact check his recaps. With True Blood in particular, he is often flat out wrong when attributing dialog and actions to characters. Bonus points for being generally nasty around the forums.

How far the mighty have fallen.

[Jonas]

@ Milla and TetaZdena -- you're not alone. To me, Jacob is one of the biggest windbags on TWOP, and as a moderator, he's what ladies use to keep themselves feeling fresh.

"The worst kind of melodramatic florid freshman year garbage."

That is a brillant analysis of his work -- and it didn't even take you 30 pages to get to the point.

I stopped reading his "recaps" when they stopped being about the show and more about how he felt about the show and his need to pontificate about it. I believe he just rambles because he thinks that every word that tumbles from his fingers on to the keyboard is golden. They're not.

[Freyan]

i seriously LOVE jacob's recaps! and anyone who does is just an idiot ... this man is clearly extremely brilliant, culturally aware and frikkin HILARIOUS!!

[Spim]

' The worst kind of melodramatic florid freshman year garbage. '

I was going to go for 'pretentious ninth grader' but that's even better.

he's a git and nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is.

His Doctor Who recaps are unutterable garbage (literally) when he goes off on some garbled trip. Reading them here in England they're so embarrassing. We all love Doctor Who too, have done since we were kids, but the way he goes on about it is just so over the top is just cringe worthy. It's brilliant, we know, but don't go on about it because you just ruin it by taking all the subtlety and shouting it out at the top of your voice.

But at least they're not as turgid and ridiculous as the BSG ones. My God.

[Eva]

Not a fan of his Battlestar recaps but I love his Farscape analysis--there's recap of plot, understanding of character and some funny thrown in.

And he's flat out funny/mean with his American Idol stuff.

[katharina]

Jacob Clifton is awesome. There's no debate. The True Blood reviews are beyond awesome. It's like watching television with an extraordinary intelligent, eloquent and well-read person next to you. It's Zen-TV: if you watch The Apprentice, watch it totally, watch it with awareness and as if there was nothing else. It's subversive TV consumption, the opposite of dumbing down.

I agree that he (he?)'s is a writer before reviewer and as such some people might not like his style, maybe they prefer to read Charlaine Harris, but I for one am praying for a book to come out.

[junie]

@katharina I completely agree. I find his writing insightful and hilarious. I might be one of the few, but I feel like I get so much more out of the show when I know I will read his recaps later. I don't write in the forums so I can't comment on his moderating abilities, but as a writer, I find him engaging, funny and thoughtful about his shows. The recaps that just list the events of each episode miss the point.

[landscaping trees]

There are many plants that can be grown in these wetlands like: red maple, silver maple, carpinus carolianiana, quercus phellos etc. No matter which plant you grow, they will definitely serve the purpose of enriching the natural environment and maintaining the ecological balance.

[firedmyass]

I've stumbled into this discussion fairly late, but my admiration and, yes, love for Jacob's writing is huge.

And, to Milla from above... I have never had to look up an "unrecognizable" word in his work. An unfamiliar reference or concept may arise, but I always get the gist from the context in which it appears. Are you always so pinched-up and humorless? Please check with a trusted teacher, doctor or otherwise trusted professional; you may also be stupid.

[Mal]

I also stumbled on this page while looking for more writing by Jacob Clifton. His recaps of Doctor Who and Farscape are extraordinary. I love his prose style--intricate and idiosyncratic, but never pretentious or obscure.

Pretentious is the slur of choice for lazy readers. On the Intertubes, as on TV, it's a felony to Use Big Words, or to quote from the canon of modern English poets, much less quote from them with genuine insight. But the authors of Doctor Who and Farscape are not mouth-breathers; they read those poets and use those words, and their audiences can handle a bit of complexity.

I enjoy Doctor Who and Farscape, but Jacob's recaps have pretty much doubled my interest and emotional engagement with the shows. He has a particular flare for analyzing angst without draining it of value, and he has a wicked, kickass sense of humor. Here's hoping he is writing a novel on days when there's nothing on TV.

[Sick of Stuck Up Losers from Austin]

I find Jacob's Gossip Girl and Caprica recaps completely tedious and pompous. His long-winded, self-important ramblings do not strike me as "insightful" or "complex," just boring and repetitive. I just want to know who went home on American Idol - not your smug opinions about everything for 40 pages. I don't think it makes me "humorless" to be bored beyond belief by garbage being passed off as "analysis." Jacob sucks. He should leave twop and write a non sequitur masterpiece. That way those who choose to be bored to death may do so; the rest of us just want to know what happened on Caprica!

[Matty]

Jacob is a pompous ass, who thinks he's a better writer than he is. Apparently, he believes we're all interested in the "stream of consciousness" dribble that spurts from his keyboard.

Some of his early "Battlestar Galactica" recaps were good, until I realized that I didn't need to read a 40-page recap of an hour-long show that had nothing to do with the show itself, but Jacob's pathological need to show how "smart" he is.

If you want to read some really awful Jacob crap, try his online novel. There's a reason he's never moved beyond writing recaps and moderating at an Internet message board about television -- he's as inconsequential as it is.

[Pedestrienne]

Jacob's writing is dreadful. Total wank. I feel much the same as Spim. Having been brought up on Doctor Who, I just find his recaps utterly cringe-making. That he often seems to be the recapper for my favourite shows is one of the driving forces in my breaking up with TWoP and moving in with TVgasm.

[jabberwocky12]

These are pretty old posts, but hate for Jacob and his writing can never be expressed enough. What's with his off-topic philosophical ramblings about 'American Idol' and 'Gossip Girl'? GG may have, at one point, been a little deeper than it appeared at first glance but there's certainly never been enough hidden meaning to warrant pages upon pages of pseudo intellectual rambling. Don't even get me started on his AI recaps. I mean, who waxes poetic about AI? It's ludicrous.

Of course, anyone who lobbies criticism at his shit writing is denounced as "prissy", "stupid" and pathologically averse to insightful commentary. Personally, I like a little insight thrown into my recaps on top of the snark. But all Jacob does is ramble humorlessly and endlessly about his own life and beliefs and God knows what else without ever arriving to a point.

Jacob has also been rapidly declining. He's mean, spiteful and silences any dissenting opinions. Dude's gone totally off the reservation and I hope he's shown the door soon.