March 17, 2009

A Man for All Seasons...and episodes

I watch way too much T.V.
I don't have a very big problem with that.
I enjoy it.
What I don't enjoy is watching everything go down the tube (so to speak). Remember when a season used to be a season? You could watch a series and pretty much count on it being on from week to week. Nowadays a season is a matrimony of seasons. A show will run for a few episodes and then it will go off air while another show runs its season for two weeks and then another show follows it. And then that first show will come back on to run for two more weeks and then disappear again. And those shows they air in between are not good shows. They are new "reality T.V." shows like Survivor: Dancing with an American Idol. Or, the Biggest Top Chef Loser. And of course, The Amazing Celebrity Race. Who thought this up? Did the networks all get together one day and somebody said, "I know, let's run a season within a season within another season".

And what is it about introducing a new T.V. series; running it for three episodes and then flushing it down the toilet? Why do they do that? I was watching that show, thank you very much. And oh yeah...didn't you just throw a whole bunch of money down the drain producing those three episodes?
And then there's content. I know...I know...if you don't like it then don't watch it. But is it really necessary for me to block 185 channels because at some point during prime time one of my daughters will be flipping through stations to watch something, only to find Charlie Sheen making yet another reference to his manhood or the plethora of women he has no respect for? I mean, at least when I'm watching CSI I can tell my youngest to cover her eyes because the blood is coming. But I'm not here to write about that. We all know what to expect when we turn on the tube. What I want to know is: What has happened to all the writers?
I thought that when the writers went on strike it was because they thought they were being underpaid. I thought that that money would in turn provide new material. Like inspiration, suspenseful drama and gut wrenching laughter.
And I was really hoping that they'd stop with the Law and Order stuff. It had a pretty good run in the day but, did we really need to have a dozen different shows? How many of them can they make anyways? I bet at any given hour on any given day on any given cable network, you can watch Law and Order. Let's see what the writers did this year.
Medium.
After five seasons Allison still appears to be the butt of the joke. Her boss Devalos still wags his finger at her and says, "No Allison, you're absolutely wrong!"
And Detective Scanlon will blatantly come out and call her a liar. It seems like after five seasons, with nearly every case solved because of her dream-like intuition, that her co-workers would come to respect her judgment and take her word at face value. But in every episode the writers still manage to pull off a swing vote of making her look like a crazy idiot that nobody will listen to until the end of the show when she solves the case and then it's all, "Way to go Allison. Great job. I guess you're not that big of an idiot after all. Our bad."
And what about Joe? Can he be more snotty? Selfish? Disrespectful? Unsupportive? Why would the writers do that to her? She already has to deal with her coworkers who treat her like garbage. I say after five years...lighten up. And put the damn phone on her side of the bed. She's the one getting all the phone calls in the middle of the night.

24
Seven seasons and Jack Bauer still rocks. But...
Can they at least give him some new lines? And the screaming. Always with the screaming. "Chloe, there's no Time!"
Isn't there, Jack? Isn't there?
And speaking of Mrs. O'Brian...Is she ever going to turn that frown upside down? She was mad at the world seven years ago, is she still mad at the world now?

LOST

Now these writers are just sitting there having races. Every episode leaves you more confused than the other. I love it. But then, that's the way I roll. I will be sad to see it go. Bon voyage you wackos.

BONES

Seally, Sully, whatever your name is...Get a room. Oh wait! That might ruin the dynamic. I have to say I like everybody in this show except for Bones. Why didn't they give her a heart or soul? Let's work on this, fellows.

DeSPeRatE hOUsEwiVeS

Five years in the future? Really? Okay.

I guess in a way everyone who had a job as a writer during the writers' strike dodged a bullet. If the writers had not reached some sort of resolve before the economy started going all crazy, then I'd probably still be sitting here watching reruns. And the network did manage to bring back Chuck. I'm happy about that.

<:)

2 comments:

*mary* said...

The only show that I still follow is Lost. It is crazy, but I still watch it. There's one on tonight isn't there?

Sultan said...

After I had my stroke I have watched an endless amount of television. I find it mindless and soothing in an odd way. I think there has been some improvement in some ways from the old days. When I was a boy I loved the Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Bob Newhart show. Happily I can still watch these in reruns. Some of the new series on Cable are quite good like Mad Men but there is so much on that a lot of it is bound to be bad I guess.

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