LA Times: TV review: 'Cult' serves up a new form of mass anxiety

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-st-cult-review20130219,0,5185486.story

The CW's show-within-a-show drama — starring Alona Tal, Robert Knepper and Matt Davis — plays on the idea of brainwashing disguised as entertainment.


By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic

February 19, 2013, 5:30 a.m.

No art form is more sensitive to social media than television.

Over the years, shows as disparate as "Grey's Anatomy," "Mad Men" and "The Colbert Report" widened and intensified their fan bases through Twitter, Facebook, network websites and YouTube, making devotion just as important as ratings in defining a show's success. But there can be a dark side to this intensity; a fan's feeling of ownership can erupt in vitriolic hysteria when a beloved character is killed or an episode doesn't deliver — the social-media furor over the first season finale of "The Killing" almost got the show canceled.

Now, it appears, television is fighting back. The CW's "Cult" takes the notion of the super-fan to a whole new, crazy-great level by creating a show within a show that has intentions far more lofty and nefarious than simple ratings dominance.

VIDEO TIMELINE: Winter shows

On the actual "Cult," which is created by "Farscape's" Rockne S. O'Bannon, a fictional CW show, also called "Cult," has a fan base "The Walking Dead" would die for. Also, it has a creator more powerful than "Mad Men's" Matt Weiner — the mysterious Steven Rae is not only allowed to remain in seclusion so he can write whatever he wants, but he does so with no network involvement.

FULL story at link.