“What is an Aftershow?” by S.M. O’Connor

An aftershow (also spelt after-show) is a television show (or web series show) with a talk show format that is an ancillary series to another show, typically a drama, which the network plays after episodes of the main show, not unlike the special features a movie studio provides on a DVD or Blu-ray that are meant to be seen after a movie. [For the most part, there is an aftershow episode that is a companion to each episode of the main show. However, there have been at least two cases where the aftershow had only two episodes per season that were meant to be seen after the season premiere and season finale.[1]] It is made for the benefit of hardcore fans,[2] not casual viewers. A host or hostess interviews the showrunners (executive producers in charge of bringing a series to the screen), the stars and/or guest stars, other people involved in the production, and possibly celebrities who are fans of the show.

The Canadian pay channel MTV, not to be confused with the original American pay channel MTV,[3] which is a, pioneered the concept of the aftershow with The After Show (2010), which it showed after so-called “reality TV” programs made by MTV in America. In 2011, Sony Picture Television’s Embassy Row production company created the aftershow format with Talking Dead, a series on A.M.C. hosted by stand-up comedian and actor Chris Hardwick that is meant to be seen after episodes of the zombie horror shows Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead. In 2011, Sky Atlantic, a British pay television channel that mostly shows American programs, also started Thronecast (2011-2019), an aftershow for Game of Thrones (2011-2019). Five years later, H.B.O. started its own Games of Thrones aftershow, After the Thrones (2016), but it only lasted one season. In 2013, A.M.C. had After Bad (2013), an aftershow that ran after the last eight episodes of Breaking Bad (2008-2013), which was also hosted by Chris Hardwick.

Just as The Truman Show (1998) predicted so-called “reality TV” the film also predicted the aftershow. The premise of the science fiction film, written by Andrew Niccol and directed by Peter Weir, is that Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is the unwitting star of a television series that has aired twenty-four hours a day without interruption since his birth. A media conglomerate adopted him – the first time, we are told, that a company adopted a child – and launched a television network that is devoted exclusively to airing content about Truman. The island on which he lives is a giant sound stage called the “Omni-cam ecosphere.” Every single person he knows, down to his parents, his best friend, and his wife, is an actor or actress. Ed Harris plays Christof, the showrunner who plays God with Truman’s life. Harry Shearer, a comedic actor best known for providing twenty-one voices on The Simpsons, plays Mike Michaelson, the host of Trutalk, a talk show that airs while Truman is sleeping as a forum for the network to answer questions about (and spin perception of) issues arising from Christof’s total control of Truman’s life.

Obviously, aftershow is a portmanteau of after and show, as indicated by the fact it is sometimes hyphenated after-show. In terms of etymology, it is almost certainly inspired by the term after-party, which means an exclusive party held after the performance of a play or musical concert. This type of smaller party is also sometimes held after a wedding reception or other large party with dozens or scores of guests. Similar terms include afterhours and afterschool. Afterhours events at a business (whether an office or a tavern) occur after the normal workday has ended or the public establishment has officially closed. An example is an after-hours drinking club, something that would have been popular during Prohibition. Afterschool is a term that means something a student or students do after the school day is done. A student might need afterschool tutoring, join an afterschool club, or get an afterschool job.

ENDNOTES

[1] These exceptions are Talking Saul, the aftershow for Better Call Saul – a prequel series to Breaking Bad – and Hacking Robot, an aftershow for Mr. Robot.

[2] Hardcore fans are the kind of people who buy fan magazines; pay to have their pictures taken with the stars of the series at conventions; write fan letters to the stars; nowadays follow the stars of the show on social media; purchase officially licensed toys, clothing, and memorabilia; and attend conventions that are official gatherings of the fans of a particular show (as opposed to broader conventions like comic book cons) such as for fans of Star Trek (1966-1969), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and Angel (1999-2004), Lost (2004-2010), Supernatural, etc. Dozens if not scores of such fans launched YouTube channels devoted exclusively to relating their theories about George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books and Game of Thrones and examining the theories of each other.

[3] Owned by Bell Media, the Canadian channel MTV has the name and branding of the original American pay television channel MTV under a licensing agreement with Viacom.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.