ARCHIVED ARTICLE

April 7, 2002 - DISCUSS THIS ARTICLE



The Hours Lost
If I could add up all the time I've spent in front of the tube over my life, I'm sure the total would depress me beyond anything a psychotropic prescription could do to help me. As a kid, TV was my babysitter. Whether it was before school (remember the Great Space Coaster?) or after school (Thundercats, Robotech, Transformers...), the television was always there to make sure I could find solace and comfort and some sort of regularity in life. [Side note - commemorating all those wasted years is this incredible web site, Yesterdayland, which will suck you in longer than any serial drama ever could.] And despite the educational benefits of watching PBS day-in and day-out during those long, languid summers, I am still thankful for the intervention of the local Parks and Recreation department for giving me an outdoor and social alternative to veging out to Vegetable Soup and Reading Rainbow.

By my junior year of college, I realized that I was setting my social, athletic, and academic calendar to the prime time TV schedule. Workout tonight at 7:00? Sorry, no can do. Jeopardy is doing that "Tournament of Champions" thing this week. Going to the movies with a bunch of co-workers? Nix that - it's Thursday night. I have to watch ER. Study for finals? C'mon, a break every night from 8-11 pm is totally justified - especially for "Must See TV!"

Once it had dawned on me that I had an excuse not to do something just about every day of the week because of some great TV program with an immersive storyline, it also clicked why I was long removed from any sort of relationship, growing a beer gut, and feeling time pressure during my free time - all in the comfort of my own home. It was around that time that I made a conscious decision to sever - at least partially - my relationship with the idiot box. But with 103 channels of free cable, it was tougher than giving up smoking. Eventually, I pruned my must-see shows and found more (inter)active ways to spend my time, which made me feel worlds better about myself.

Reality Bites
I have nothing against television, per se. As I said before, for years I found solace and comfort in the medium's regularity. There are and have been some incredibly well-written and well-executed shows that are well worth their respective half-hour and hour timeslots. Immediately, The Simpsons, Sopranos, and Cheers come to mind, and there are numerous others that continue to entertain me to this day. (Literally - tonight's Simpsons was gut-wrenchingly funny in its take on medical marijuana.)

But for every brilliant serial or side-splitting comedy, there have been hundreds of ill-conceived-yet-well-received pieces of trash released to the airwaves for the mind-rotting of the masses. Take the trashy talk show trend, with Jerry Springer having taken the throne atop the pile of the rubbish heap. Or the dating-oriented "game shows" portraying the most hideously mismatched blind dates on earth. The current blight on the television landscape that I'll bemoan, however, is so-called "reality" TV.

Now I'm the first to admit that I've enjoyed a few episodes of these reality shows here and there. Temptation Island made me laugh my ass off, Fear Factor has made me ponder just what I'd do for a chance at fifty large, and Lost made me realize just how stupid we can be when it comes to world geography. But in general, I don't care for the genre.

If I want to see reality, I'll watch the news, I'll check out an in-depth investigative report, or I'll - god forbid - go out and live in this crazy world of ours. I hardly need to be tied to a time slot to see human drama unfold before my eyes. Hell, I can interactively do that by going to a cliquy internet message board of choice whenever I want. I don't need producers to choose what bits of people's lives are supposed to be compelling for me.

Beyond the fact that it's what I consider "artificially generated reality," I think it's a cop-out. Mind you, it's a brilliant cop-out on the networks part. No longer do they have to pay millions for unionized actors. No longer do they have to pay thousands for unionized writers. And best of all, they can minimize marketing by using the age old water-cooler method. After all, nobody wants to be left out of the water-cooler conversation at the office. (For some reason, though, CBS seems to find every possible moment to plug Survivor or The Great Race during pivotal moments of the sporting events it airs.)

The TV I knew and loved as a kid was creative and fun. People worked for hours, hell, maybe even days to come up with new characters, interesting storylines, and sometimes elaborate settings for numerous stories to unfold - formulaic as they may have been - to provide an escape from the everyday humdrum existence. Now you just throw a bunch of people on an island, make them play some puffed-up party games, and offer 1/10th of the money it would have cost to develop a real show as the prize money. Instead of interesting, multi-dimensional characters that took the work of a writer, director and *gasp* actor to bring stories to life, we are given the likes of Lex, Richard Hatch or some butch former flight attendant to be the real-life assholes we try to avoid at work, school, and parties anyway. If I wanted to watch the politics between uptight control freaks and the people around them, I'd go back to my old job, but that's another story...

Disgustipated
I'm not easily shocked. I've seen enough of the wretched, mad, and simply strange in the world to not be taken aback by all too many things. But tonight I saw something disturbing enough to spur me to write this whole dealie.

Shock-based entertainment is good. It's often funny, thought-provoking, or just plain outrageously fun. Without the element of shock/offense/etc., the likes of Tom Green, Howard Stern, and Marilyn Manson would be in the unemployment line, and love 'em or hate 'em, they do their job and they do it well. (Freddy Got Fingered not withstanding.) Now you can go and watch whatever you want - if it tickles your pickle, it's fine with me - I just don't need to see said tickling. But thanks to the oh-so-wonderful boom in "reality" television, there's one show out there I'd like to wholeheartedly condemn.

There's this crap show in sydnication (on Bravo in the UK, of all things) called MAXimum eXposure. (Note the emphasis on the X's, making it hip and extreme, like Mountain Dew or something.) In it, they show home video footage of horrible disasters from around the world. A tornado ripping through urban Ft. Worth, TX, a flood destroying a good chunk of Venezuela, a landslide taking people out in god-knows-what-part-of-the-world. All the while, some smart-ass voiced narrator (sounding much like the countless smart-ass DJs you hear on "new rock" stations around the country) makes wisecracks about the events. People are dying or getting severely injured, losing their lives and livelihood in one disaster or another, and the voiceover man is making jokes about it. Sure, there's an audience for this stuff out there, and it's what we call (borrowing from the world of mathematics) the Lowest Common Denominator. I'd love to see what the LCD would think if they were to show amateur video footage of the World Trade Center collapse or the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing with Mr. Smartass saying, "Well geez, I guess that building wasn't up to code! Better luck next time, architects! Terrorists 1, USA 0." You would think that by now, a producer or whomever would think a bit before putting out a show that laughs at the mass-scale misfortunes of others.

Oh well, at least they haven't stooped as low to make another show about talking babies. [Click here for evidence of the contrary.]

Constructive Time Again
I'm not here to rant endlessly about the evils of television. As I've said, there's a good amount of worthwhile stuff on the tube. The rest, in my humble opinion, is crap, but you can choose what you want to watch. But that's what I'm here to urge - please, just choose what you really like, and then go do something with your life. I say this not because I like to preach, but probably more out of the shock of a recent article I read. Having seen this sort of lethargy first-hand, I think if one person who comes across this finds a way out of their TV rut, then I can feel better.

How do you go about this? It's easy. Which shows do you find the most memorable? Which programs are the one that you can quote lines from, sit at the edge of your seat when something big is happening to a character, or derive the most pleasure from when talking about it with your friends? If you can't remember any quotes, you either have really poor short term memory or the writing isn't all that good. If you can't relate to any of the characters or at least find a reason to be truly interested in their lives, then maybe it's not worth your personal time. If nobody you know wants to talk about it, maybe it isn't worthwhile. There are numerous ways to prune shows from your "must-watch" list, those are just several thoughts.

If you watch TV simply to pass time, think of what you'd rather be doing. If there are things you've always wanted to do but they don't take place in the evening or whenever, use that time to figure out how to do them. Want to go whitewater rafting? Why not take some of that free evening time to research it and find out what it'll take to jump into that new sport. Still just want to waste time? Try something with a little interactivity, like getting together with friends or discussing things with total strangers on the internet. Go for a jog (or if you have bad knees, a run). Discover what interesting things are going on in your town in the evening. I've long bemoaned the lack of nighttime activity where I live, and I fear it's because everyone's sitting on their duff watching The Weakest Link instead of appreciating the jazz quintet playing to a nearly empty coffeehouse.

The point is, you've taken the time to get away from the TV set to do something as simple as, oh, reading this web site. Think of all the other things you can do. By cutting out the TV-land fat and concentrating pretty much on The Simpsons, news, sports, and special events as my regular viewing diet, I've had more time to discover new books, hone my DJ skills, make music, write crap like this, and spend more time with family and friends. Now if someone with an addictive personality and a penchant for mindless entertainment can do this, so can those 7-out-of-10 inactive Americans who are perpetuating our image as lazy bastards.

The term "kill your television" is a pretty common one now, often used by people encouraging a less sedentary lifestyle. Coined in pop culture by alternabrits Ned's Atomic Dustbin back in the day, it was actually first done by Elvis *way* back in the day when he literally shot his television set. Personally, I don't recommend you do anything remotely like that, but I think if more people rethink their TV habits, we'll all be a little better for it in the end.

In the meantime, I've got to go. I just got an email from a Depeche Mode fan mailing list that they're playing "Dream On" in its entirety on tonight's episode of Alias on ABC. Now that's a compelling reason for me to watch TV. *sigh*

Up next in this series, Omid explores the dangers of music addiction, like when it forces you to spend an hour of a Sunday evening watching when you could be, umm, discovering more new music to listen to. d'Oh!