TV has changed...
May 22nd 2007 05:54
So I figure since this is an opening, the first exposure to me and the views about to be expressed herein, I should make it really, really good. But passed hoping that this ends up being really, really good, I don’t know how else to positively affect the quality-based assessment of its final form.
So I’ll jump in at the silly end with a topic all of us have no doubt thought about with furrowed brows at some point in our lives.
I have reached that point. It is my time.
Because….
TV has changed. It used to be this grand, all-knowing, all-providing entity of endlessly fulfilling entertainment. I remember being beyond astoundedment every time I saw a new episode of Lois & Clark or McGyver or Hugo and Victor. I remember when ideas for shows were new and ideas felt fresh and crazy and had the tendency to cause seizures.
I mean, the eighties and nineties had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pokemon, He-man, Inspector Gadget, Round the Twist, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, Samurai Pizza Cats, Full House, Friends, The Simpsons and reams of other heartily thoughtful and reliably freaked-out shows.
Now what do we have? Big Brother and New McDonald’s Farm is what.
TV as a whole has almost jumped the shark (a phrase apparently born of the original Adam West Batman series where Batman jumped a shark in his bat-boat or something and the show just got stupider from there). I mean, stalwarts like The Simpsons that have remained on TV after 19 seasons or whatever have become these malformed anodyne versions of their former selves. Every Simpsons joke now is either randomness for the sake of it, or something gross in animated form. It’s entirely vapid. That’s right, vapid.
And other cartoons.. what happened to cartoons that were actually good and had a DIFFERENT story every episode. Since Pokemon, which pretty much rocked in an after-school-with-a-fruit-jui ce kind of way, it’s like they don’t know how to make anything in a non-fighty format. Everything is about battling in some way. Duel Masters, BeyBlades, Digimon, MegaFightMonstersFuntimeGo – it’s all the same. They find a formula and stick to it.
And I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that they do that, or they fact that they do that BECAUSE WE MAKE THEM.
I think a big chunk of it is the dominance of reality TV over other genres. Audiences are getting more used to judging people through the TV set and fun, intelligent, non-people’s-pain TV is falling to the wayside.
Though there is hope.
Shows like Heroes, Hi-5, Medium, I’m a Teenage Outlaw, and Scrubs are all beacons of holy light in the darkness of televisual space. Deadwood, The Sopranos and The Shield are apparently all good too (though I’m saying that from friend’s recommendations, so please don’t hurt me if they actually suck or make you feel like dying inside)
Shows like these are a breath of fresh air, mostly cos there isn’t much else out there that can still accommodate a multi-neuron brain. Even the news is all: “Are you missing out on something the world owes you?”, or: “Did you know you are probably dying from this thing we all thought was safe!!”
Hopefully, though, we’ll find a way back into better programming that’s more about celebrating each other, rather than judging. We need to start thinking more and pointing our fingers less.
Which is an odd thing to tell people to do actually.
“Hey! You there! Stop pointing the finger at people! Yeah, I’m talking to you! Stop it, okay! You’re ruining it for everyone else!”
Actually, I think that’s the key to bad television right there.
We’re all kind of hypocrites. And we seem to like it.
So I’ll jump in at the silly end with a topic all of us have no doubt thought about with furrowed brows at some point in our lives.
I have reached that point. It is my time.
Because….
TV has changed. It used to be this grand, all-knowing, all-providing entity of endlessly fulfilling entertainment. I remember being beyond astoundedment every time I saw a new episode of Lois & Clark or McGyver or Hugo and Victor. I remember when ideas for shows were new and ideas felt fresh and crazy and had the tendency to cause seizures.
I mean, the eighties and nineties had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pokemon, He-man, Inspector Gadget, Round the Twist, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, Samurai Pizza Cats, Full House, Friends, The Simpsons and reams of other heartily thoughtful and reliably freaked-out shows.
Now what do we have? Big Brother and New McDonald’s Farm is what.
TV as a whole has almost jumped the shark (a phrase apparently born of the original Adam West Batman series where Batman jumped a shark in his bat-boat or something and the show just got stupider from there). I mean, stalwarts like The Simpsons that have remained on TV after 19 seasons or whatever have become these malformed anodyne versions of their former selves. Every Simpsons joke now is either randomness for the sake of it, or something gross in animated form. It’s entirely vapid. That’s right, vapid.
And other cartoons.. what happened to cartoons that were actually good and had a DIFFERENT story every episode. Since Pokemon, which pretty much rocked in an after-school-with-a-fruit-jui ce kind of way, it’s like they don’t know how to make anything in a non-fighty format. Everything is about battling in some way. Duel Masters, BeyBlades, Digimon, MegaFightMonstersFuntimeGo – it’s all the same. They find a formula and stick to it.
And I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that they do that, or they fact that they do that BECAUSE WE MAKE THEM.
I think a big chunk of it is the dominance of reality TV over other genres. Audiences are getting more used to judging people through the TV set and fun, intelligent, non-people’s-pain TV is falling to the wayside.
Though there is hope.
Shows like Heroes, Hi-5, Medium, I’m a Teenage Outlaw, and Scrubs are all beacons of holy light in the darkness of televisual space. Deadwood, The Sopranos and The Shield are apparently all good too (though I’m saying that from friend’s recommendations, so please don’t hurt me if they actually suck or make you feel like dying inside)
Shows like these are a breath of fresh air, mostly cos there isn’t much else out there that can still accommodate a multi-neuron brain. Even the news is all: “Are you missing out on something the world owes you?”, or: “Did you know you are probably dying from this thing we all thought was safe!!”
Hopefully, though, we’ll find a way back into better programming that’s more about celebrating each other, rather than judging. We need to start thinking more and pointing our fingers less.
Which is an odd thing to tell people to do actually.
“Hey! You there! Stop pointing the finger at people! Yeah, I’m talking to you! Stop it, okay! You’re ruining it for everyone else!”
Actually, I think that’s the key to bad television right there.
We’re all kind of hypocrites. And we seem to like it.
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