The Golden Age of Television
II. Counterpoint: TV Apocalypse
III. Final Word: The New Season
Point: Coaxial Rising
There are two exceptions: news and comedy. The news has never been less informative or thought-provoking (and lately it is entering the territory of being just plain evil—Fox News, I’m talking to you), and comedy? The situational comedy, or sitcom, has been dead for years, and I cannot fathom why so many of them are still on. Someone must be watching, but it isn’t me.
These not inconsequential caveats aside, television is far better now than it ever has been before. The aforementioned sitcom is the hollow legacy of television’s formulaic past. Due to the pressures of drawing viewers in on a night-by-night basis, television was dependent on formula. Developing a bigger story over multiple episodes was something reserved for special occasions—namely, season premieres and season finales. In the normal run of things, the writers had to find some way to keep the problems in a given episode from actually spilling over and causing any changes to the general structure of the show. Hence, the coyote never eats the roadrunner. I am bored.
Luckily, things have changed.
With the success of boxed DVD sets of entire seasons of most TV shows (the ones that don’t run up against sticky legal issues regarding the rights to music they never thought they’d need anything other than broadcast agreements for), digital television recording options like TiVo, and the recent legitimizing of the Web as a viable way to distribute recent episodes, audiences now have far more options available to them should they need to catch up on the plot of a show. No dedicated viewer need be left behind, and writers are now free to create more intricate plots. The canvas has bloomed. Any new medium will generate new inspirations, and the beauty of TV is that now we can really find out what it feels like to watch a visual novel. What began with Twin Peaks, Homicide, and the early NYPD Blue has blossomed into some of the best coaxial programming that we have ever been lucky enough to watch. The emotional payoff of a twenty-two hour setup is far more exciting than anything Hollywood could hope to achieve over the course of a comparatively anorexic two hours. Movies are one-night stands; TV shows are full (sometimes multi-year) relationships.
One of the biggest players in the game is HBO, which has taken the long form that television offers and spun it into some of the finest moving images ever seen. HBO not only is in the position to produce television shows of its own, but it also escapes the second hurdle: FCC regulations and network censorship. Because it’s cable, HBO is free to do whatever it damn well pleases—and lucky we are to be able to view the results. It is not really enough to simply say HBO offers some of the best television programming of all time—you could just as easily say it offers some of the very best storytelling of all time. The Sopranos is a literate work of art that should be studied in college classrooms. It deserves many an eight-page essay. Even six seasons in, it manages to stay surprising and honest. But The Sopranos isn’t the only great show HBO offers: you also have The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Rome, Six Feet Under, Oz, Sex and the City—one wonders why they even bother acting like anyone cares about the actual Hollywood movies they offer. I only watch HBO for the shows.
But okay, a lot of people agree with what I’m saying here. What about reality television? Isn’t it the nail in the coffin of television programming? Does it not signal the end of the world? Are we not all ashamed to be watching this dreck? Emphatically: NO. I’m not. I’m a devoted viewer of Survivor, American Idol, and The Apprentice (among others), and I do not find anything wrong with these shows. Disregarded by elitist cultural snobs (some readers wonder: “Doesn’t that mean you, Kris?”) as base and insulting—and some of it surely is—not all reality television is bad. Much of it is very, very good—and good for you, too. The Apprentice should be watched by anyone interested in project management—or management in general. Survivor and Idol, well—what can I say? I don’t think Idol is any worse than American Bandstand or Star Search—it’s an old, old formula—and as for Survivor? What can I say? It’s the game show equivalent of Lord of the Flies, and it manages to show people making interesting choices nearly every week. Color me entertained.
The missile of criticism launched most often against reality television is that the shows are staged. Well, who cares? First of all, I grant the producers some license to throw curveballs into the mix. That’s the purview of a good producer. I also respect the editors for their ability to shape the episodes and give them some dramatic structure—that’s their job. So yes, things are manipulated to make for good TV, and yes, the editors will shape the events toward a certain end. That’s what they’re paid to do, and it is good TV if it gets me interested.
Anyone who has watched a season or two of Survivor will be able to tell you that things tend to go down the way the contestants want them to, not the way host Jeff Probst or producer Mark Burnett would want them to. To that end, it is often very surprising which way the players go. This unpredictability of reality shows is the form’s greatest strength. No less important is that real Americans are involved in these shows, not some overpaid and soused L.A. actor. There’s a selection process, of course (producers love to mix dynamic character types), but nevertheless—these are people that you could theoretically live next door to. Why wouldn’t that be more interesting than some show with yet more artificial faces? Take the HBO reality show Family Bonds—what is this show, exactly? The show followed a family of bail bondsmen and provided a whole lot of reality and not much show (which is perhaps why America failed to entirely embrace it). I challenge you to tell me the difference between Family Bonds and a documentary. Most reality TV shows are just documentary filmmaking married to a game show model. Looked at in this way, it is clear to see that reality TV is really just the next generation of game shows—and a clear and dramatic improvement over them. Perhaps more shows will follow in the footsteps of Family Bonds and shed the games, but I’ll admit this is probably just wishful thinking.
I cannot say that all of reality TV escapes charges of exploitation, but I can say that more often than not, the exploitation is really no worse than the participants expected when they signed on.
If you can’t find something interesting to watch on TV these days, you only have yourself to blame. Not everything out there is gold—again, I have no defense for the state of comedy and news programming—but you should have at least one or two good hours waiting for you every day. If that’s not enough for you, you’re watching too much, anyway. Go buy a video game if you have that much free time.
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Counterpoint: TV Apocalypse
Yeah, I get it, The Sopranos is the best thing that has ever been put on television. Any two episodes of old school, Sorkin-written The West Wing is better than the vast majority of feature films. Cozying up with 24 DVD hours of Lost is like taking down Sherlock Holmes only with audio and Evangeline Lilly’s tight ripped body. It is fair to say that there are people out there who have figured out how to make a true “graphic novel,” and it is good.
For every good program that you can name, there are ten others that are devoid of any semblance of basic entertainment value. With 500 odd channels, television is starved for programming. So starved in fact that any idiot with a camera (and I use the term “any” to its most expansive meaning) can get on TV. The sheer magnitude of truly horrific programming means that to find your fix of Doctor Gregory House you have to pick through the refuse heap of American culture laid naked and smelly in front of you.
Reality television is one baby step removed from putting a sandwich on a string and filming a homeless man stumbling after it. “The new game show?” Hardly. Reality TV has been around forever. What we call reality television other cultures have called public stoning, gladiatorial combat, virgin sacrifice, or “the freak show.” Human kind seems to have an insatiable need to identify people who are worse off, cage them, and mock them for amusement’s sake. The only reality show I truly liked was the 3 episode run of The Chamber. In this show, they strapped people into a chair and put the chair in said chamber, and then tortured them while they asked them questions. Real torture: electroshocks, burning heat or freezing cold, spun them around and around—basically as far as they felt they could push it without committing a crime (it turns out, the producers didn’t actually know where that line was). I appreciate this show above all others because I feel that if you are going to torture people for my entertainment dollar, than it best be real torture. Not some disingenuous “I thought this guy I met on a TV show with 50 other women really loved me, and am surprised to find that he just wants a slut” crap. If the Bachelorettes need or want to be on TV so damn much despite being devoid of any identifiable skill, somebody better be testing the conductivity of all the their silicon. No self-respecting Roman would show up to see Christians being “menaced” by lions. If there is fun to be had, it is in the feeding.
Reality TV is an easy mark, and I wish the wasteland of modern television ended there, but it sadly does not. I mean, have you SEEN a situation comedy lately? Perhaps every potential comic situation has been explored twice over, or perhaps I just don’t appreciate that midgets, monkeys, and homosexuals are always funny no matter what they are doing, but right now the war in Iraq is funnier than TV.
Speaking of wars and the “public service” aspect of TV, I think we can all agree that right now we are at the nadir of network journalism. The news is so bad that the fake news (see The Daily Show) is far and away more informative than anything on the major networks or cable news channels. The only difference between Iraq and Vietnam is the coverage. Well, that and the fact that we had a BETTER REASON for invading ‘Nam, but that is a different topic.
Of course, anything that even slightly resembles “learning” or “intellect” is being systematically exterminated from television as if it were settlement of Sioux. This country is so threatened by knowledge that even something as benign as The Weakest Link was too brainy for your average “books are gay” Americans. In its place, we have Deal or No Deal. No questions, no answers, just pick a box. You don’t even have to be able to articulate which box you want, you can just point to it. The only skill required on the show is the ability to know when you should stop picking boxes, and this is the game because it turns out that most contestants just … can’t … stop … picking boxes. And you wonder why they hate us?
Hey, remember when the Discovery channel used to be chock full of British guys watching wallabies screw while they said “Amid the chaos, there is still time for a private moment.”? Remember when you could turn on the History channel and have a fighting chance of watching something that was about history? Not anymore. If I have to sit through one more episode of “Deadliest Monster Mega-Structure of Disaster” I’m going to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge myself. Rednecks have hijacked my dork channel, how is that fair? I don’t go to NASCAR races with a copy of the alphabet pinned to my back. Couldn’t there just be one channel that wasn’t geared around what Kevin Federline might watch?
We are living in the golden age of television if you expect television to shock without challenging you, to titillate your senses without arousing your mind. Maybe Kris should call this the golden era of DVDs, because if you turn on your television you are far more likely to end up on an episode of Law and Order: Handicap Parking Unit than anything worth watching.
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Final Word: The New Season
I will fire one final arrow in defense of reality TV and then let this one go: If you drop a blanket statement condemning the whole genre, you are a nasty, elitist, cultural snob. Name calling finished; I’m moving on. (I grudgingly cede the point about the fun being in the feeding; well said, but gladiators? Really? I doubt Taylor Hicks would last long in the coliseum.)
As for Deal or No Deal, I have no defense, other than to say that ... really, don’t you just have to see what’s in the box?
In a way, I’m glad we took our time putting this article together, because HBO has proven there are still exceptions to my attempts at rule-making. A week ago, HBO finished with Sopranos and Big Love and launched a fresh new Sunday lineup. One new show is, I grant you, irredeemably awful (Dane Cook’s Tourgasm is even worse than last year’s mock-reality show The Comeback, which for me was really The Justgoaway). The others? Fantastic. Entourage managed to pull off a really sweet start to its third season, Deadwood is back, the third season of the magnificent The Wire is re-airing for folks like me that missed it the first time out, and then there’s Louis C.K.’s Lucky Louie.
A sitcom.
I could not believe HBO was airing a sitcom. I watched it, expecting the worst: a foul-mouthed clone of Rosanne (which is kind of is), boring and passé. What I found: a fantastic, funny, irreverent gem that made me laugh more than I have at many recent Hollywood comedies. I may still wish the sitcom a quick and painful death, but I still hope Lucky Louie survives the assault. It proves that there are at least some people clued in to the failures of the old ways and the promise of new shows and new seasons.
About the lack of an emphasis on learning and the intellect: I have just discovered the fantastic and witty Veronica Mars, which is a sort-of reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer minus the supernatural bloodsuckers. Odd that I do not exactly miss those. Nor do I miss the improbable kick-boxery of Buffy herself (all kick-boxery seems to be solely inherited by Alias star Sydney Bristow). Veronica Mars immediately trumps Buffy, and there is one good reason why: Veronica Mars’s superpower is her brain. She is smart (and in very convincing ways), capable, and (more than the whiny Buffy) a good person and a good friend.
In short, in one week I have found two new brilliant shows to watch. Can you really call this the TV apocalypse?