Why Television Became Better (and Worse?) in the Last Decade

I am currently reading a book in which one of the main themes is opposites and the paradoxical nature of human beings. We may be the most compassionate of animals, and yet we are the most violent. We are both extremely creative and destructive. There are plenty more examples of this, but you get the picture. Anyway, while watching an episode of The Wire on DVD the other night I was reminded of how our tendency to contradict ourselves has played a role in television over the last decade.

The first thought that occurred to me was of the myriad of wonderful shows I have seen over the last ten years. I have invested far more time in television than ever before because there has just been so much to choose from. Then I remembered all of those times that I have turned away from the television with absolute revulsion , thinking that I never wanted to watch it again. How can this be? The twenty-oughts (or whatever you choose to call the first few years of the new millenium) have simultaneously given us the best and worst television ever produced. What is she blathering on about now, you ask? If you are still with me, I'll explain. In the interest of ending on a positive note, I'd like to first talk about how dreadful television has become in the last ten years.

2000-2010 was indisputably the decade of the reality show. Reality shows have been around since the inception of television, but it wasn't until the early 2000's that we were inundated with everything from snakes crawling over peoples faces to the everyday lives of wealthy, unintelligible former rock stars. Diversity is not a problem when it comes to reality shows, but there is one sure and simple thing that binds nearly every one them together. They are bad.

Have you ever thought about how utterly embarrassing it would be if an alien culture intercepted our television transmissions? I'm sure they would have serious reservations about any kind of first contact. Think about it. How awful would it be if the Real Housewives of Orange County constituted another advanced species' first glimpse into human society? Reality shows represent all of our worst attributes. Pettiness, greed, ostentatiousness, pretentiousness, and vulgarity are just a few of the adjectives that come to mind when I think of the vast majority of reality shows that have popped up over the decade. If the anti-gay marriage activists want to find things that are truly destructive to our culture, they should look to reality television.

Aside from presenting substandard content, the writing and production of most reality shows is pretty poor. It is difficult for me to understand why anyone would want to watch a group of people sitting around in their house talking about their petty differences and their plans to do away with one another. If you want that, than why not simply observe your own dysfunctional family or find one to adopt you? And yet shows like Big Brother do get ratings? Is this another example of our dual nature, that we are compelled to watch shows we know are awful?

Of all of the reality shows on T.V., I can think of exactly two that might have something to offer. American Idol is one of these although I must be one of the ten people in the country who does not watch this show. It just isn't of much interest to me. However, this show has decent production value and I can see why so many people find it entertaining. It features real talent that we might not otherwise see. Another show that I don't usually watch but have found to have some substance is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It may be repetitive, but it is brimming with hope and has a real constructive purpose behind it. I'm aware that I may be exaggerating a bit here and that there are probably other examples of decent shows in the reality show genre. The point is that they are few and far between.

Turn to virtually any news program if you want to see another example of the worst programming ever to hit the airwaves. Television news has been going downhill for a long time, but that thing we once called news finally met its demise in the last decade. A specific example that immediately comes to mind is Fox News. I'm not exactly sure what to make of this mishmash of crazed punditry and half-baked journalism, but it certainly isn't anything I would rely on to tell me what is going on in the world around me. We might blame Fox News for being the proverbial nail in the coffin, but I think that cable television as a whole really deserves that noteworthy distinction. Cable television has shown us yellow journalism at its worst in the last decade. The practice of sensationalizing and exploiting absolutely every topic in a mad grab for ratings seems to have completely overshadowed what we thought was a news show's primary purpose of reporting news. Remember the movie Network? I guess life imitates art.

Sadly, cable television news is dragging regular broadcast news down with it. What is left to do but shake our heads when we turn on the Today show only to find that the top story is about the love affairs of Tiger Woods for three consecutive days? How many disasterous events have you seen turned into media circuses? I'm almost afraid to turn on my television out of fear that stations will treat the horrific and sorrowful events of the last few days as if they are a movie of the week instead of imparting information and ideas that would actually lend help to the people of Haiti. In their attempts to fight with cable T.V. for ratings, I wonder how many viewers the network channels have lost. I now rely on radio or pick and choose from printed stories for nearly all of my news. What kind of crazy time is this in which the Daily Show, a fake news program often does a better job of delivering the news than regular news outlets?

Now that I have had my rant about how television has eroded in the last decade, I am free to discuss how much better it has become. Cable T.V. may have been the death of the news program, but it has done quite the opposite for scripted television. It was cable television that gave birth to a slew of incredibly, high-quality dramas like The Sopranos. Cable television has taken the "cop" show to entirely new levels with such wonderfully crafted shows as The Wire and The Shield. Forget the old dime-a-dozen, cop versus bad guy formula. It's been replaced with gritty, well written, superbly directed, expertly acted scripts that grapple with corruption across the board. Ironically, these shows are so good that they feel more real than the typical reality show. At first it may have had something to do with the fact that cable television was less subject to censorship and, therefore, free to be more creative. However, the tendency toward producing better quality fictional shows has since spilled over to network television.

I'm not arguing that previous decades have not produced some very good shows. What I am saying is that the number of really great shows has increased dramatically. When I think back, shows like MASH, Barney Miller, All in the Family, Homicide (before its untimely cancellation), and X-Files (before it jumped the shark) immediately leap to mind. It is just that the last decade alone has produced more shows of that caliber or better than any time in the past. Shows such as Mad Men, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, 24 (for the first 2 seasons, anyway), Weeds and The West Wing, Dexter, and Battlestar Galactica are only a few.

We have also had an influx of fantastic comedy shows in recent years. I think it is because so many more creators of comic television have chosen to follow the Seinfeld model. What I am talking about are shows like Flight of the Conchords, 30 Rock, and The Office. At their core these shows are nothing more than a modern version of the screwball comedy, but what makes them good is that they are centered around characters and dialogue as opposed to situations. Think about it. We liked I Love Lucy because Lucy was funny. We tuned into Three's Company not because the plot was great but to watch the antics of Jack Tripper. In the last decade there were more choices of shows where all of the characters not only made us laugh but underwent a certain amount of development even though many of them were shallow. Take The Office, for instance. This mockumentary based on the British comedy makes for great television because of its focus on great characters. We laugh at the stupid things they do, but they are also caricatures of real people that we have known.

In almost every genre we can find a larger selection of quality television. Books are still king, but we find television increasingly able to produce the kind of literary thought-provoking or witty material we can often find in the written word and sometimes find in movies. This brings one particular show to mind. You are probably tired of reading this by now, and I am tired of writing it. However, I would be remiss if I did not give a special nod to my favorite television show, especially since it is about to embark on its final season.

This is a show centered on a tropical island features plane crashes, shipwrecks, monsters, time travelers, temporal anomalies, the walking dead, hallucinations, quantum physics, and a host of other weird things. The show references the work of a vast array of authors from Lewis Carroll to Stephen King to Philip K. Dick. It borrows mythology and concepts form practically every major religion and philosophy, including Buddhism, Christianity, empiricism, and existentialism. The show is at once science fiction, mystery, romance, western, and an adventure story. Those of you that have seen it know what I am talking about. For someone who hasn't seen it, it is quite difficult to describe. I realize it probably sounds like Fantasy Island on steroids. Perhaps it sounds like one of those shows that tries to be all things to all people. Actually, that is sort of what the show does. While others might fail in trying to be so comprehensive, though, this one does it exceedingly well.

It is hard to point to one reason why Lost has the makings of such great television. Like many of the great shows I have mentioned in this post, the writing is nothing short of spectacular. The actors, many of them not well-known before the show aired, are a fiercely talented bunch that mesh so well you could swear they had all worked together before.

Production value and format are two other things worth mentioning because they are areas in which Lost is in a class all its own. Visually, Lost feels more like a movie than a television show. It is full of camera work, props, and effects usually reserved for large-scale film production.

Lost's unique format is not quite like anything seen before on television. It is a non-linear story told in the form of flashbacks, flashforwards, and bizarre scenes that make little sense until they are pieced together with another bit of information shown farther down the road. It is almost more like a jigsaw puzzle or a jumbled up detective novel than an television series. Its painfully slow method of revealing its secrets may have driven some viewers away early on. We fans that followed the show for five years still don't know what the show is really about, but we eat it up with relish. Lost has a wonderfully nerdy fan base rivaled by no other except, maybe, Trekkies.

In fact, ambiguity may be the core ingredient that makes many of these new shows so intriguing and entertaining. Lost, for instance, presented its audience with one of the most fascinating television villains ever to appear on television. Here is a dastardly, unlikable person who kills, lies, and manipulates, yet we still aren't completely convinced he isn't somehow working for the greater good. Vic Mackey, the fabulous antihero of The Shield is someone who is rotten to the core, yet possesses a soft spot for women and children. The viewer cannot decide whether to root for his cause or hope that someone swiftly brings him down.

So I seem back to where I started in contemplating the contradictions in human nature. I rest my case.

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