That I've read in a long time. Absolutely true, artfully put and on a subject that I touched on a few months ago and will do this season's followup later on this week.
Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | I Like to Watch: "While most living creatures' daily lives center around survival -- finding food, water and dry shelter -- in America we live like milk-fed veal in tiny pens. With all of our needs met, we're left to fret over minutiae -- a slow morning commute, our kid's third-grade curriculum, the mole on our dog's jaw, the scratchy tag on this stupid sweater. We're so thoroughly alienated from real emotions and high-stakes situations and so saturated by artifice that our numbed senses are drawn to the faux suspense of fictional and staged reality scenarios like male ducks to a fake wooden mate: Will Kyle win the modeling contract, or go back to her job at Dairy Queen? Will the nice doctors with tumultuous romantic lives find a way to save the very sincere young man with the multiple gunshot wounds to the chest? Will the federal agent be killed by the violent semi-alien lunatic? Will Amy Grant get the disfigured child plastic surgery in time for us to see her brand-new face?
Thanks to the high-definition images in our living rooms, we can laugh heartily and snort in disgust and roll our eyes and clench our teeth and scream and sigh and smile, and then return to the featureless landscape of our daily lives with the illusion of fulfillment. As we trudge through the day, grumbling at our families while loading the dishwasher, issuing orders to our underlings at work, purchasing 50 of the same gift certificates online to get our stupid Christmas shopping over with, we don't even notice that our lives are just really long to-do lists with half the stuff crossed off. If not for the manic fun and horror and poignancy that's pumped into our TVs every night, we'd all be suicidal or nihilistic or at the very least we'd write really bad poetry and shower infrequently."
Or, as I put
it:
"During the Amazing Race for Law and Order, the Desperate Housewives realized after Crossing Jordan that Smallville's weapons of mass destruction had once again disappeared Without A Trace. Meanwhile Joey vacations on his ranch fantasizing that by wearing everyday Scrubs his Friends will come back to Primetime and he will be King of the Hill on That 70's show, Once Again. Las Vegas has reduced that Fear Factor to Medium, since according to Hardball it is a Cold Case that Larry King and Inside Editon won't touch .
A Crime Scene Investigation of Grey's Anatomy ensued after a Dragnet revealed Criminal Intent when Meet The Press entered The West Wing and found a Dead Zone. Where's Gannon when you need him. It used to be Joe but I think it's Jeff now. Meanwhile Two and a Half Men want to be a Rock Star and the two Gilmore Girls are playing House as if nothing is wrong. The Average Joes are striking back at the Special Victims Unit and I Want to Be a Hilton, not really. The Bold and The Beautiful teamed with The Young and The Restless for 60 Minutes on the WWF before they went to General Hospital for treatment. Big Brother is just starting to realize that the Empire is in serious need of the ER, while According to Jim, the King of Queens and My Wife and Kids are off Trading Spouses with George Lopez.
Now this isn't everyone's idea of 7th Heaven, but we can't all be a Monk and live like a lowly Apprentice. The Daily Show might recommend an Extreme Makeover of the upcoming E-Ring, not a Nip/Tuck, but this is a Less Than Perfect solution when what Amurica really wants is The Shield to Rescue Me from Over There in 24 so we can return to Everwood to pass the Days of Our Lives with All My Children.
Behind the O.C all is not yet Lost! The polling Numb3rs reveal that with Hope and Faith the Arrested Development of Veronica Mars can be fixed with 8 Simple Rules to ensure that there will be at least one Survivor among the 4400 who will be able to say that What I Like About You is the Stargate you built so I can join Battlestar Galactica and battle enemies that don't believe in the one true god. Revelations."
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