The state of television

I haven't felt the urge to review anything on TV in a while, mostly due to the endless reruns that only enhance the winter blahs, but also because there hasn't seemed to be anything that's particularly piqued my interest.

Granted, there are still a few shows that exhibit strong storylines and characters, but for the most part, TV has sunk into a quagmire of mediocrity. There will be some who argue that TV has been mediocre since the early days of colour, but those people generally tend to be luddite subversives and technological xenophobes with unrealistically high standards of entertainment. They are the holdovers of the Vaudeville generation that never learned to embrace the extraordinary accomplishment of the moving picture.

For the most part, I disagree that television over the last fifty years has been substandard. As the medium grew, so did the risks networks were willing to take on novel show concepts. Many of the most successful series in history were highly controversial at the time (although judged by today's standards, Mary Tyler Moore's Capri pants on the Dick Van Dyke Show are unbelievably tame).

Among the more cutting edge, highly original shows of the last half century, I count The Honeymooners (the seminal sitcom, a comedy about an abusive, drunk bus driver), Star Trek, (finally, a whole show about cheesy looking men in alien costumes), The Carol Burnett Show (a whole hour of comedy spearheaded by a - gasp - woman!), Monty Python's Flying Circus (while not widely understood or regarded in the U.S. during its original run, it remains the weirdest, consistently funniest and most original sketch comedy show of all time) Three's Company (it's ok to be confused for a gay man if you've got two hot chicks to keep you in check), M*A*S*H (probably the most important half hour dramedy ever to come on the airwaves), All in the Family (the first family sitcom to exploit the worst aspect of human nature in Carol O'Connor), Star Trek: The Next Generation (finally a whole show about Klingons and androids), Law and Order (there's nothing like Jerry Orbach's snappy one liners and Sam Waterston's carefully written cliches), Married With Children (the first family sitcom to exploit the worst aspects of human nature in every character) and The X-Files (finally, a show about "real" aliens...) and there's a whole bunch more that you all will no doubt be leaving remarks about me not including.

Article Author: Amber Grapestain

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