The Tribe Has Spoken

It often happens that Sherri writes something that seems worthy of contributing to on a grander scale than what can be contained in a two-inch comment box.  In this case, she wrote about the stupidity of certain television shows.  

It probably comes as no surprise that I eschew television shows that are not intelligently written.  True, I got hooked on the first season of “The Apprentice”, but that was before I learned that “reality” television shows are scripted, too.  Yes, they are.  Not in the conventional sense of actors being handed pages to read.  “Reality” shows are scripted backwards, sort of the same way that China designs airplanes: by reverse engineering.  The actors are put into situations that pose the potential for conflict, and then filmed from multiple angles simultaneously.  The writing staff then takes the raw video footage and pieces it together in a way that makes a story that can be told in 46 minutes.  The story must have incident, which is to say that there must be an event that can stand on its own without explanation.  The purpose of incident is to offer an advertising hook, to get people to watch the show, and to keep people tuned in through the commercials.  Incidents happen within a minute of each commercial break…and the Trademark Incident happens at the end of the show: “You’re fired.”  “The tribe has spoken.”

The problem with this is that it’s an unnatural act trying to pass itself off as a natural act.  There’s an old scientific principle which states that, “The observer cannot avoid changing that which is being observed.”  The presence of (multiple) cameras removes all reality from the situations being filmed for the “reality” show.  Or, as Adam Savage says on “Mythbusters”, “I reject your reality and substitute my own.”

So, basically, those shows are nothing more than badly-written fiction.  They are the Robert James Waller novels of television.  (And yes, I know, every woman on the planet swoons at the mere mention of The Bridges of Madison County.  It’s still dreck.)

I need something smart, something that engages my mind on more than one level.  Something that isn’t focused entirely on impossibly good-looking people.  (I’ll buy the idea that you can have a PhD in Marine Biology by the time you’re 26, but you won’t also have had time to make yourself look that good in a wet suit.  There has to be some evidence of all that cold pizza you habitually ate in the lab at two AM while you were working on your dissertation.  Also, am I the only one who thinks that the question of how these new marine creatures make the water warm could be answered with a trip to the nearest public pool?)

I watch “The Gilmore Girls”, because the show is about smart people who seem to be okay with the fact that they don’t have it all figured out.  The dialogue is full of cultural references both pop and not-so-pop, and often has more than one reference in a single line, as with this exchange between Lorelai and Rory discussing the new waiter at their favorite diner:

Rory: Ew!
Lorelai: He doesn’t look that bad.
Rory: He’s the boy who dissected a frog, didn’t wash his hands, and then ate a sandwich.
Lorelai: Ew!
Rory: He’s like the lost Farrelly brother.  He’s so stupid.  He watched “The Breakfast Club” and decided to tape his own butt cheeks together.

Granted, it’s not “The West Wing”, but then not much is.  “The West Wing” makes me very glad I have TiVo.  I don’t expect the show to last much longer, though – they had “A Very Special Wedding Episode” a few weeks ago, which means the bell is tolling.  It was great run while it lasted.

“Lost” is, of course, one of the best shows on television, though I’m a little disturbed about what I’ll call character churn on the show.  Character churn is when characters are written off the show and new characters replace them.  This is happening too often, I think.  And of course, it’s an island, so the only way to write characters off the show is to kill them.  It’s pretty obvious that the 2021 season on ABC will not include a Lost Reunion, nor will we ever be subjected to A Very Lost Christmas.  The other disturbing thing about the show is the morality of it: the first female character to get laid since the crash became the first female character to be killed, later in the same show.  I can set that aside, though, because it’s still great theatre.

Smart, funny, original shows often disappear too quickly.  “Sports Night” lasted a season and a half before it got kicked off the Fox island.

Thanks to my daughter, I’ve discovered another show that met a premature demise: “Firefly”.  Part space opera, part western, this show was smart, funny, and corny all at once.  The characters were stereotypes (a Hero, a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, a preacher, a doctor, a crazy girl on the run from the law…), but the dialogue was fast-paced, witty, and exotic.  It had the two qualities that made the first three Star Wars movies (episodes IV through VI, for those of you born after 1975): witty banter and a refusal to take itself too seriously.  

Actually, I’m glad that “Firefly” didn’t last longer than it did.  Like “Buffy, The Vampire Slayer”, it might have lost its edgy wit after a few seasons, and left us with the dark shell of a once-great show.  

So what will I be watching next week?