Things that need to stop: TV edition

Every once in a while, I watch TV. Ahhahaha if you believed that for a second you're a foolio, I watch TV constantly. You could say I'm a TV-head.

TV actually has been in pretty good straits lately, if straits could ever possibly considered to be a good thing to be in, and I think they ought to at least be given a chance. A few of the shows that I watch:

"Mad Men"
"The Mentalist"
"Numbers"
"House"
"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"
"South Park"

I'm sure there are more there but those are all I can name off the top of my head. Oh here's another one:

"Lie to Me"

So yeah, just a few years ago this list would be sparsely populated, but thankfully there's been more attention paid to creating at least semi-interesting TV.

But still a lot of TV, and this is including cable, is straight up garbaggio (as they say in Italy when they're acting stereotypical, insert your own curled moustache here). And I don't mean merely disinteresting. I mean YUCK GROSS EW IT'S GOT COOTIES, like I don't even want to be near it. No, not even with the cootie shot.

Now I know what you're thinking. Yes I do miss you and I'm lifting weights so that when I see you I won't be such a slobbo. Yes I also know that the Red Sox blow and you secretly ackownledge that, can we stay on topic? Yes, you're also thinking, "But my love, if you hate a show so much, then just don't watch it!" A valid point, dearest, but also missing the point... in a way.

The problem with bad TV is that it tends to propogate faster than good TV. For every "Mentalist," there are three "Heroes" or "According to Jim"...s. That's three Jims too many.

How come bad TV propogates so easily? Well the reasons have changed. It used to be that disposable TV was made because, even though it may not rake in ratings, it at least was cheap to produce. Then reality TV came and outdid the lowest of the low.

TV will never be perfect, but there are things that just have to stop. They have to stop. For the safety of our children. Or if you hate kids, for the safety of misanthropes. Now you're speaking my language!

Reality TV

I'm not the kind to beat around the bush, unless it's a bush that grows cookies, then goddamn I will beat that bush until every last crumb has come down. But in this case, I'm getting right to the dark, evil, unpleasantest heart of TV: reality TV.

I don't need to get into the history of reality TV. We all know that story. I also don't need to go over all the myths around reality TV, how it's basically just scripted TV et c. et c. (some people actually do write it like that). That territory is old.

What bothers me the most about reality TV is not its utter hypocrisy. It's just completely banal. I understand that most people are dumbasses, usually of the manchildren variety, but it's baffling to me. Even soap operas have some level of intrigue to them. Reality TV?

Let's take the most egregious example, in my mind. "Dancing with the Stars" is the king (and queen) of shit reality TV (but I repeat myself a hyuck). It has everything I hate: utterly pointless "characters," a lame gimmick, limitless cross-promotional potential and it's a game show. Yes, reality TV has gotten so monstrous that game shows are now considered reality TV. This is HERESY. Even the Huguenots acted with more dignity.

The "competition show" is perhaps the most crass (crassest? let's go with crassest) example of reality TV. And "Dancing" has it in spades. Let's see, we have non-threatening minority female judge, boisterous asshole judge, and the wild card (in this case, a non-sensical flamboyant male). I have no idea who these people are or what their level of expertise is in the fields of dancing or starring. For all I know, the Asian lady could be a sweat shop worker who got lost on the way to a factory in Brooklyn. Okay, so what if she can sew a skirt in under five minutes for half a Jolly Rancher? How am I supposed to trust her? And what happens if I put this skirt in with the whites??? Someone help me?????

Then there's the show's entire premise. Hoo boy, I want to watch D-list celebrities and the occasional wash-up dancing with some lady (or dude) I never heard of. Oh look, they're dancing the basa nova. Actually the professional dancer is doing the basa nova and Mickey Rooney is just standing there swaying rhythmically. That's not Dancing with the STARS, that's Middle School Dancing with the OH HEY I SAW THAT GUY ON MATLOCK ONCEs.

The coup de grace is that people are expected to watch it, and then they're expected to be so vested emotionally into it that they call a number up and vote on who wins and loses. I don't know what part of the brain is accessed when someone tries to weigh the dancing efforts of Natalya Simkovicius/Orrin Hatch vs. Edit Mariposa/Dan Shaughnessy. Well, Orrin's cha-cha was kinda off, but Shanks had a wrong step in his foxtrot. You'd have thought that everyone who possessed that brain section would have died out by now, but noooooo. Thanks a lot Darwin you cocksmurf.

I mean, people understand that it's all fake, right? "Oh but dude, DUDE, they know. But it's like, so what? So 'American Idol' is scripted, but so is 'Law & Order,' you know? Like, c'mon man!"

No, there is a difference. L&O doesn't pretend to be real. It's fully content with operating in its L&O New York and it doesn't need some couch commandos in Ohio telling Detective Richard Belzer who to arrest. No matter how dull the L&O writers may be, they are at least minimally qualified to tell Ice T what ebonics to say.

Dancing has no writers. Okay, it has minimal writers who make up some backstory antics for everyone, probably, but that's about it. Also there's no guarantee that people voting has any effect on it at all (see also: American Idol). So for all that effort people put into it, the joke may still be on them. Well I'm not laughing! :watches video of a cat being woken up: Ahahahahaha, okay now I'm laughing.

CLONING THEM SHOWS

Law & Order. CSI. NCIS. Okay we get it, you have a gimmick and you can't just restrict it to one hour.

Usually these shows are called "spin-offs," but I don't consider shows that are the same exact premise in a different locale and a different but functionally indistinguishable cast as an actual spin-off.

CSI is particularly egregious in this regard. CSI itself is a rather lame concept (hurrrr let's exaggerate the power of forensic science so much that it's absurd), so why do they want to recreate the magic of CSI in... THE EVERGLADES! Oh boy, I wonder if they'll have an episode about alligators and creepy Floridians. How about... THE BIG CITY! Hey let's have an episode about BANKERS. We can't do that in Las Vegas, we need WALL STREET.

Most of the time, these clones are just an excuse for the writers to use different cliches, as I just pointed out. They want Caruso and co. to investigiate urban crimes, but Las Vegas is a barely urban shithole so that won't fly. So just transplant it to New York. Problem solved. Except that once those cliches are exhausted, they just go through the motions until they're mercifully cancelled.

Occasionally these shows will get the clever idea to crossover for a few episodes. Like we're supposed to give a shit that Grissom and Gary Sinise are teaming up FOR TWO EPISODES. They don't actually team up, though. It's complicated. And stupid. Especially stupid.

Usually these shows end up failing once people realize that they liked the show better when it was called "Friends." That was the fate that befell "Joey," but lately, if a show is a hot property, its clones will also survive.

L&O is the only show that sorta does this right, and really that only happened with L&O: CI, when they actually changed up the cast structure so it's just two principals. But even then the show was reduced to having D'Onofrio twist his face menacingly at the prime suspect while recycling the crimes that the other L&Os have gone over. I find this objectionable because L&O: CI is trying to make me hate Vincent D'Onofrio and, you know what, I'm just not gonna do it. You can't make me hate him, L&O. You hear me? You have no power over me. YOU HAVE NONE. I LOVE YOU VINCENT D'ONOFRIO EVEN IF WE CAN'T BE TOGETHER.

If this goes unchecked, we will one day wake up to a world where every show is a clone. 8 p.m.: CSI: Brussels, followed by Survivor: Oakland Coliseum. At least on broadcast. If you don't believe me, keep in mind the following:

1) networks are becoming more desperate due to the economy

2) reality TV is ultra cheap

3) cloning hit shows produces more hit shows

It can happen here, as-- wait, what? McAfee Coliseum? ...... No, why should I call it that? That name sucks. ........ No, see, look, it's still also called McAfee Coliseum. ...... Yeah. ...... No I don't care. Shut up I'm in the middle of something.

Anyway, as Sinclair Lewis said, it can happen here.

Your show is not funny and you should probably stop now before someone gets hurt. Namely you. By my gun.

Oh that reminds me:

"Thirty Rock"

Okay anyway, sitcoms are back with a vengeance. This genre used to be considered in trouble after "Seinfeld," "Friends," "Frasier" and (amazingly) "Mad About You" shuffled off their celluloid coils. Wait, were they filmed on celluloid? Look that up for me.

Yeah, people were actually worried that sitcoms would be horribly reduced, perhaps appearing in not more than two hours per week. Unfortunately, they were rescued. By what I can't remember, but they were rescued from the abyss.

One of the shows that took up the mantle of leading sitcom is "The Office," one of almost a billion imports from Britain (seriously, look up the origin of many American shows and you'll find that they were lifted from Britain).

Speaking of which:

"Life on Mars," though it's over now.

So anyway, the British Office is nothing to write home about. Yea it's very British but it's also very dry. And for something British to be considered too dry, it has to be doing something seriously wrong. Or seriously salty. If you dropped the British Office in the Atlantic ocean, it would suck that bitch up so fast you'd be urbexing Atlantis within a day.

The American Office isn't as dry, but that doesn't save it. Not even close. The Office was one of the first successful sitcoms to not use a laugh track (the other being "Arrested Development," which is actually good).

Reminds me again:

"Real Time with Bill Maher"
"Entourage"
"True Blood"

I guess they have no laugh track because the British Office has no laugh track either. Whatever the reason, it doesn't work. It just makes the show more tense than it should be. The show relies on awkward and embarrassing humor, which is tricky because if you do it too poorly, people just feel nervous and shit and don't feel like laughing.

And that is The Office's biggest problem: It is relentlessly awkward by being relentlessly WACKY and RANDOM. Hoooo boy, the boss is a total fucking retard WHAT CRAZY THING IS HE GONNA DO NEXT? I dunno, but why am I watching a show with a tense atmosphere that has such obviously incompetent and loathsome characters, and yet they are still employed? I can't suspend my disbelief because your comedy is so disjointed I can't tell if you're trying to be funny or not. Your "comedy" is so poorly executed, it kills my humor INSTINCT. IT FUCKS WITH MY VERY BRAIN CHEMISTRY.

Viewers have come to see the laugh track as stupid and pointless because, hey, why should I use some canned laughter to tell me when to laugh? A valid point, but still, most comedies need some kind of laugh track because it helps the pacing. Even better when it's filmed before a live audience. It feels more authentic that way if you think other people are laughing with you. The common complaint for non-laugh track shows is that people don't know if they're supposed to laugh at something. I think there's something to that. Something... sexy.

Fortunately for us, most sitcoms are not strictly taking The Office route (the The Office route?). Many still have laugh tracks and many still have stationery cameras (more on that later), but the type of humor it uses is leaking. Shows like "Big Bang Theory" and......

Oh my fucking God.

Okay... here's the deal. So I was looking for the name of the other example ("Parks and Recreation," incidentally). In doing so, I checked the grid for all the broadcasting networks (minus barren hellholes MyNetworkTV and whatever the fuck owns the former WB). It turns out that there are like only seven sitcoms on TV anymore. I did not notice that they were apparently on the verge of extinction again. I guess that's not notable anymore.

Well folks, I gotta tell ya, since sitcoms are rare these days, I don't think picking on them is fair at all. Well guess what? I still will.

What's remaining of the sitcom shitscape (hur shitcoms GET IT???) isn't very much like The Office, actually. Most of the remnants are of the "Married with Children" variety, except not at all funny. In that case, we're all aware of the low points: nuclear family, everyone is mildly retarded, the mom is sassy, the dad's dumb, the daughter's hot, etc.

So in conclusion, sitcoms are right back where they were in the late 90s, minus the actual powerhouses. I guess I should be happy, but it seems that reality TV has taken up the majority of their slots. So yeah. The nightmare rages on.

KEEP THAT SHIT STILL

Shaky cams are slowly appearing in more TV shows, just as they're appearing in more movies. This needs to stop. No, I don't get nauseous watching it. I just like to, you know, be able to concentrate on what I'm watching. And since I have ADHD (yeah it's real but fuck that I don't need to take pills for it. Alexander Graham BELL had it and he could kick your attention-ful ASS in a spelling bee), it's distracting. I can't focus with you MOVING THE CAMERA AROUND. WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?

The Office strikes again. It and Arrested Development introduced that concept to mainstream acceptibility, one of AD's only sins. Which is actually contracitory but shut up, who's the editor here, you or me? That's right. I don't care how much English you teach THIS IS MY TURF.

So yeah, when you have something that adds nothing to the show (and no, "simulating" a documentary (in the Office's case) isn't a good excuse because the idea that the Office is some kind of documentary is completely ridiculous), and instead is a distraction, it's a BAD THING that should STOP.

Does anyone here know how to write a griddarn STORY???

This is the paramount problem with TV, and I don't need to tell you. But I do.

Moving beyond the frivolous reality shows and the dumbass sitcoms, the dramas remain the bulwark of primetime TV. Although reality shows have almost usurped that role, dramas are holding on for dear life. And they're gonna lose.

I don't know if this has always been the case, but dramas do not rely on their stories anymore. They rely on their concepts. Take a prime offender: "Heroes." Heroes is a show about people with superpowers. END DESCRIPTION.

You might be confused by this, but don't be. Heroes is all flash, no substance, like a sparkler. Sure, you can eat it, and it's kinda exciting at first, but then you realize that you wasted your time eating a sparkler when you could have eaten something cooler like a Roman candle.

Heroes has its concept and then does nothing with it. And then it does some more nothing with it. And then it does even more nothing with it. The show's excuse for plot developments is exactly like the flailing of a dying chimpanzee (and believe me, the show IS dying in every way a show can die. See: Knight Rider's remake). I don't know what the writers are thinking, but they are content with going nowhere with it. Fortunately, in a hopeful gesture, the show's fans are abandoning it in droves and it will die due to a lack of interest. Just like my pet nightshade bush. :sniff: I miss you Nighty Night.

A more pervasive problem is that dramas, which are supposed to be like, you know, dramatic, have ludicrous plotlines that suck all the non-humor out of the room and replaces it with something that is not humorous (like the Pope. Come on, Benny, get some new material!!). Heroes has the same problem, as do "24," "Chuck" and "Grey's Anatomy."

What these shows attempt to do is akin to making a movie about a Nazi concentration camp (that is, a concentration camp made by Nazis), and then making the plot about Barney leading a Soviet commando raid to liberate it. Yes, Barney the purple dinosaur, but you can also use Barney Rubble if you prefer. The effect is the same.

Now imagine someone pitching that as a serious movie. It can't be done. I can't take the idea of Barney liberating a Nazi death camp because Barney is also a Nazi and he would never collaborate with the Bolsheviks. Also the image might look just plain silly.

24 has basically become this. The show is so clueless as to how stupid it sounds that I suspect that it might be trying to be absurd on purpose. The previous season dealt with the White House being infiltrated via an underwater tunnel. And that wasn't even the most absurd aspect. The show is chock-full of "serious" situations that, if we were to hear about, we would not believe. Because they would never happen, which is kinda foolish since a lot of really bizarre shit happens in real life but nobody ever draws inspiration from those things.

Desperate Housewives also tries to shoehorn REALLY SERIOUS SHIT in the middle of hijinks. I know there is a term for this, the "Dramedy," but it doesn't work. It does. Not. WERK. Dramedies are just handwavery bullshit used by writers to justify inserting stupid crap into their shows because they constantly write themselves into corners and need something silly to bail themselves out. Drama + comedy rarely work, and if you're gonna include them, you need much more of the former to counteract the latter. Writers don't seem to get this, though, which I believe is because they are actually robots that lack souls and functioning humor chips. Fuckin' Intel they can never get that shit right.

I don't know if the dramedy will become the blueprint for dramas. I don't think it will, but stupider things have happened on TV. But right now, dramas are flailing because writers have no capacity to imagine their shit actually playing out in real life, and in doing so, realizing that what they write is stupid. In some cases it works anyway ("Chuck," though just barely, "Grey's" and "24" seem to be surviving for now), but many shows push the bullshit too much and collapse under their own hubris.

And while it's good that bad shows are not getting away with as much as they used to, the fact is that if most shows drop dead, they will be replaced by expendable reality TV trash. And that is the worst of all worlds.

Perhaps one day I will do detailed dissections of TV shows and their myriad failures, but not today. I've bored you long enough.