Why Television Smells Bad (Stinks)

I've been at my parent's home in Dallas for the past few days now. They have a big screen TV. And Satellite. I have neither of these. Naturally, I am attracted to the glowing box and desire to journey through the 999 channels to my heart's content.

At first this seems like a good idea. "Yes! I can finally see who got Punk'd this season. I can catch a few Who's Line Is It Anyway?s. I can get caught up on Elimidate and the Surreal Life." And after a few hours of aimlessly roaming through channel after channel, my initial good idea begins to rot and reveal the actual very bad idea that it was to begin with. To simply put it, television sucks now. There really is nothing good on.

MTV doesn't even play music anymore. There is absolutely nothing "M" about it. It is pop culture, actors, rock stars, gossip, movie awards, reality shows, and post modern advertising. Where is the freaking music? I grew up watching Aerosmith music videos on MTV. Now there is none. It is a circus. It is just one big, ongoing freakshow. There are shows that cater to homosexuals, shows that have grown men being dominated by dominatrix (spelling?), shows with midgets getting drunk and naked and urinating in the living room, shows that recreate both cars and personal identities, and so on and so forth and so case. I do not want to watch Jessica Simpson and her husband watch TV on the couch. I don't want to watch Brittney Spears in the car on the way to a concert. I don't want to watch Ozzy scolding his pet. I want to watch musicians do the very thing that they are known for. You know...play music. I am very upset with the way MTV turned out.

So let's say MTV is not for you (or me) and you decide to change the channel. What do you turn to? The hot Prime Time line up for the summer? This basically means reruns of ridiculously unfunny shows that take place in corporate America that revolve around the unbelievably unclever sex jokes. "Good morning Johnny. What were you doing last night?" "Just taking care of...business!!!" [Insert laugh track here] And if corporate comedy isn't for you, you have a wide selection of forensic, criminal, sex dramas to choose from, all of which are bad. Court cases and suburban mysteries don't really do it for me.

Neither do the reality shows. The Apprentice is popular these days. I'm not sure if the home/wardrobe make over shows are as popular anymore. But they were at one point. There is just something about reality TV that rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps because I would rather experience reality myself than to watch someone else do it. You really can flip on the television and actually watch someone else watching television. This is absolutely absurd to me. And why does every multi-million dollar business exec want his own reality show? Mark Cuban, Donald Trump, Hugh Hefner, Sylvester Stallone, Jessica Simpson, Ashlee Simpson, Jessica Simpson's dad, Jessica Simpson's mother, Jessica Simpson's cousins, etc. Bla Bla Bla.

What happened to sit coms? There are no good sit coms out there right now? Where are the Taxis or the Saved by the Bells or the Seinfelds of this generation? Is the sit com going extinct? Is it a passing trend, only to be replaced by the wave of reality television?

Television has tanked in my opinion. It has officially jumped into the toilet. I think that HBO is our only hope. And I am not lying. They have created a structure called "Original Series" that frees creativity from the bureaucratic baggage of corporate television. Writers are free to experiment and express themselves how they want. And as a result, some very promising shows have been birthed. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex and the City, the Sopranos, Da Ali G Show, Six Feet Under, etc.

And by the way, my parents don't have HBO.