Apparently something crazy happened on last night's "Breaking Bad". I wouldn't know; I don't watch the show.
Over the past ten years or so there have been some really great shows that generally appeal to people like me: young, have enough money to have the luxury of having cable that includes channels like the Food Network and AMC, and people with time to make a habit of devoting an hour or so each week to watching. Shows like Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, and other shows that come on Showtime, HBO, etc. have done really well with my demographic and with awards programs. They have great writing, great actors, and enough money to continue making their programs. I generally get on the wagon a little late, though.
Take 30 Rock for example. I didn't start watching the show until season two. I found season one at Target during their crazy holiday promos. I instantly devoured it. It's hilarious, at least to me. The critics love it, the award shows love it, but it does not have a huge audience, like many of the other shows I mentioned. But I made time to watch the entire first season--it was easy, each show is approximately 22 minutes and they are hilarious. You can bust out a few episodes in half the time you would spend watching any of these other hour-long dramas.
I have not been able to get into any of these other shows because the commitment is too much. I once watched the first season of Heroes (another critically acclaimed, yada yada yada). I lost like 23 hours of my life because I got so absorbed. The show wasn't that good and I will never get that time back. I cannot take another risk like that. Season two was a total stinker and I stopped watching after the third or so episode. The same thing with Lost. I watched the first two seasons back-to-back before I started grad school. I was totally hooked. Then the first few episodes of season three were horrible, they were doing that weird split season craziness, and I got totally out of it. More time wasted.
So all these shows are things I should be watching. I feel like I can be hip sometimes and I love television, so it totally makes sense. And if not these shows, then I should have been into Battlestar Gallactica, Smallville, Buffy, something like that. Maybe I don't like dramas. I do love to laugh. After I spent all that time with Lost during the first few months of grad school, I switched instantly to my old stand-by, Friends.
I was very late to the Friends train. Even though I totally had a Friends poster up in my room as a young baby gay, I never watched the show until I got into college and at that point the show was on its tail end. My sister and I bought my mom season one as some sort of gift. She hates anything on DVD, movies included, so she never really got into it. But me and my sister watched all of season one over the course of two days. It was easy--the 22-minute format is great. And it's light hearted, has nothing to do with meth, Baltimore, and there's no real asshole on the show except for maybe Chandler.
As I am writing this, Ben and I started discussing this very topic. I said I don't care about watching many of these shows because it's such a time commitment and you have to watch so much television filler to get at the good stuff. Then he made the argument that some of these shows were originally designed with an end date in mind, whereas others like Lost and Heroes started out with the intention to be on TV forever so they had to stretch and make stupid decisions about plot and character to be able to make their 22-episode deliveries. I guess when you only have to make 13-episodes and you know you're only going to be on TV for five seasons, you can edit out the poop and get to the good stuff. Case and point: Sex and the City.
When that show began, HBO and the creator DUDE (because let's face it y'all, SATC was a show about women ultimately brought to life by a man and not Candace Bushnell. Most of the first couple seasons were written by this dude and the women writers and ultimately SJP as producer hopped on board later than most people want to really own up to) they knew they were only getting into six seasons, a la The Sopranos. When you know how long your show's going to be on, you can be more interesting and have better scripts because you don't have to make up things to fill in multiple years because you know your time is finite.
SATC did well because it was a half-hour, it was hilarious, and we knew it would end. Friends began to take a dark turn because it just kept going and going and going. Certainly, there are moments in the later seasons where it is hilarious, but not quite as hilarious as in the first few seasons. I'd say that SATC remained continuously entertaining because they could use only their best jokes and didn't have to scrape the trash bin to recycle duds (although the argument could be made that most of Charlotte and Samantha's jokes and storylines were pretty, well, leftover).
Okay, so maybe I should spend some time with some of these shows. But dang y'all, I don't know if I have it in me to sit down and watch The Wire. It takes so long! And it's not funny. I like my shit to be light. This is why I love trashy television. Rachel Zoe, The A-List, anything featuring RuPaul. These shows are entertainment because they don't take themselves seriously. It is not that big of a deal to me that Snoop got shot on The Wire; didn't she really have it coming? I mean, hello, you deal drugs or something in Baltimore. It would be insane if Miranda got shot, and totally unexpected! And I sort of feel like comedies, because they don't take themselves so seriously, can be more free with what and how they write. And I find that more creative and interesting. And the same with stupid reality shows. The cast are always a bunch of bobos, and maybe because they do take themselves so seriously but their stakes are so low is why I like it. It's not going to be the end of the world if Rachel Zoe doesn't get the right dress for Anne Hathaway for the Oscars, but it is funny to watch her slug back coffee and not really eat anything ever all the while knowing everything will be okay. All sorts of contradictions here, but whatever.
Long story short and the more I think about it, I think I'm not into certain dramas because it is thought that I should be into those shows. I hate when I feel like I should like something just because people like me should like it. And that makes me hate it. The A-List reunion, hosted by Wendy Williams for the second year in a row, is coming on tonight. I need to go spray tan.
Jon
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