Linda Holmes labels seven approaches to TV criticism, including:
The Craft model. In a lot of ways, this is the kind of criticism with which people are most familiar. It’s focused on the quality of work that goes into a show — how strong is the directing, writing, acting, lighting, scoring, and so forth. The higher-brow the show is, the more Craft writing there is; nobody spends a lot of time writing about the direction on NCIS or The Big Bang Theory, even if they like those shows.
And:
The Maker model. These are the pieces of writing that focus on the relationship between a show and its creator, in spite of the fact that lots of people’s work go into the final product. It’s kind of like auteur theory in film, although it tends to be a little more from-the-hip with television, and it doesn’t necessarily indicate that anyone is sophisticated enough to be considered an auteur. These are things like Emily Nussbaum’s marvelous New Yorker piece on Ryan Murphy, “Queer Eyes, Full Heart.” There are makers who attract much more Maker writing than others — Shonda Rhimes, oddly enough, attracts less of it than you might expect, given her massive impact on the ABC lineup, while Lena Dunham attracts outrageous tons of it, despite her relatively small audience. (Aaron Sorkin gets more of it the more he complains about it, which is sweet justice for someone, but I’m not sure who.)
One follower of the Maker model would be Brett Martin, whose forthcoming book Difficult Men profiles showrunners such as Matthew Weiner (Mad Men), Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), and David Chase (The Sopranos). In a review of the book, Ken Tucker considers the quality of today’s TV criticism:
“An opportunity for editorializing and snarkiness”—that’s what has passed for TV criticism in many outlets. … [R]ecapping is ultimately a mug’s game—there is no way to maintain that kind of writing without becoming either burned out or a hack. And beyond the difficulties of sidestepping those occupational hazards, there remains the challenge of creating diverse aesthetic principles that rise above the Internet’s limited range of extracritical responses, which typically run the gamut from this-is-awesome! blog posts to fitfully edited twelve-thousand-word essays about this or that show’s elaborate “mythology.” Among those asking the proper artistic questions are Alyssa Rosenberg, blogging for ThinkProgress.com, Tom Carson at GQ.com, and Matt Zoller Seitz at New York magazine’s Vulture.
As Martin’s book argues, great TV must be interpreted and challenged by great TV criticism. Male egos may grow lush under the adoring gaze of online fanboys and fangirls. But as Martin’s vivid and idea-packed study makes plain, the best way to make sense of our culture’s difficult men, on- and offscreen, is to subject them to rigorous, if often admiring, scrutiny—in short, the sort of criticism that must now extend to television as much as it does to any other first-rate art.
The Dish 