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LIFE IS TOO SHORT
by Daren Foster

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Daren's Interview on THE SHOW about this column

LIFE IS TOO SHORT
by Daren Foster

The time had come. No more delays or postponements. Reasons owing to technological failure had once sufficed but were now as passé as blaming the broadcaster. The clock had run out. This thing, it had to be done.

Unlike most procrastination, it had nothing to do with disinterest or dread. Just the opposite, in fact. Doing it, getting it over with meant that there would be no more. The end was nigh and I would be left wallowing in nostalgia, pining for the glory days, fearfully certain that such beauty and excellence couldn’t possibly visit us ever again. I was savouring the moment, this hour plus, and when it finished, it finished, fade to black, The End.

Even now, I continue to stall, unable to bring myself to come right out and say it for fear of having to face the stark, sad reality of it all.

The thing is -- OK, here goes -- my cable provider finally got around to re-broadcasting the final episode of my all-time favourite television show, The Wire, nearly 3 months after it originally aired. Those regular readers of this column (Hey, dad) will know that through sheer carelessness on my part, I had missed it the first time around. This was followed by near criminal neglect on the network’s part in not showing it again until now. Such foot dragging is testimony to the lack of reverence the network held in the show and, as hard as this may be for me to admit, the incomprehensibly small viewership the series had cultivated.

This has been a constant source of bewilderment for me since The Wire’s debut six years ago. Given the adult content and salty language, not to mention the large roster of characters and multi-layered storylines, it was never going to achieve CSI level popularity. But, the fact that I still come across people claiming to be regular TV watchers who have never heard of the show, well, it’s enough to make a grown-up man break down and weep. Although, to be fair, I am admittedly still a little emotionally fragile two days after drinking in the final episode.

I write today, though, not to praise or bury The Wire, or to parse the elusive last show. It’s the obscurity in which the series existed that I want to examine. How is it that in this hypermedia saturated era, when opinions both high and low, wise and uninformed, are ubiquitous, where even those not following along know that Brad is concerned about Angelina’s latest pregnancy, in times such as these, how can greatness elude so much of the population?

In other words, what the hell’s a matter with people?!

This is not a new phenomenon. Genius has often played alone and unnoticed in the shadows, the sun of recognition blocked out by the massive hulking body of more inexplicably popular fare. To hear it told, Mozart died an unknown penniless pauper. Van Gogh suffered a similar fate. Posterity is oftentimes brilliance’s best friend and the ultimate salvager of reputations. If true, it doesn’t answer the question why.

Certainly volume may have something to do with it. I think it’s safe to say that in any field of endeavour, greatness (maybe even not-badness) is heavily out-numbered by the merely competent and outright awful. Many more businessmen go bust than become billionaires. Nobel Prize winning scientists are few and far between but a quick Google search will reveal a bottomless well of hack practitioners looking to make a mint off unsuspecting and/or desperate dupes. What’s the ratio of athletes who reach the big leagues to those who try? There’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway.

Allowing a degree of paraphrasing on my part, an interviewer allegedly once asked science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov why 95% of the science fiction written was crap. Asimov responded by asking the interviewer why 95% of all writing was crap including, presumably, interviews. Excellence it seems is, like a Frenchman’s steak, rare. That being the case, one would think that when it appears, wherever it appears, excellence would be glommed onto and embraced by the widest swath of the population conceivable. Again, that’s not always true. And again, why?

The easiest explanation and therefore probably the laziest and least incisive is that people are stupid. They don’t get it. They don’t want to be challenged. In the case of television, nobody sits down in front of it expecting art. Conventional wisdom has it that TV is little more than moving wallpaper, a killer of time, a way to unwind after a hard day at the office.

Many years ago, I was taking a television writing course. The instructor was a former production development executive who told us that in his experience, good television found its way onto the air only by accident, suggesting that even those whose job it is to develop, nurture and promote programming held a dim view of their product. Believing the audience to be less than discerning, they deliver suitably flaccid material to the masses. So, it’s little wonder that television greatness is few and far between.

Yet some truly magnificent shows do catch on. Classic shows like Cheers and Hill Street Blues languished in the ratings for a couple seasons before generating a wider audience. The Sopranos and to a lesser extent Deadwood, both stuck in the same ghetto of premium cable networks as The Wire, gained large mainstream recognition. Sometimes dumb as doorknob couch potatoes do take to the highbrow fare. It just didn’t happen with The Wire.

At least, not yet. Perhaps posterity in the form of DVD sales will come to the rescue, spreading the gospel to the crowds who have just been too mesmerized by the infinite entertainment choices at their disposal to have yet seen the light. (Why wait for posterity, people? Amazon.ca is now selling the first four seasons of The Wire for the insanely low price of $29.99 each. Trust me on this. Pick up the first season. It will be the best 30 bucks you have ever spent.) Another lost classic just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.

Someone recently wrote, “Life’s too short for dross.” Pompous? You bet. But there are times when I like to embrace pomposity. As the curtain came down on The Wire, I realized it was going to be tough going back to regular television, waiting, praying for the next series to sweep me off my feet. It’s just getting harder and harder to wade through the steaming pile of crap to find it. The hit-to-miss ratio is far too big and my time is growing shorter. Until television starts treating me with a little more respect a little more often, until they start serving up quality like The Wire on a more regular basis, maybe I’ll start finding ways to better while away my life.

READ MORE COLUMNS BY DAREN FOSTER

June 4 2008 - FLIP THIS CHANNEL - Buying first house leads to having many things on the mind.

May 29 2008 - BE AFRAID VERY AFRAID - The Canadian military is no longer some namby-pamby, truce-brokering, do-gooding, adventure-seeking, peacekeeping bunch of pacifiers

May 22 2008 - STONE COLD BORING ANGEL - All about The Stone Angel

May 15 2008 - HARD TO SWALLOW CANDY - Madonna is back!

May 8 2008 - THE DUMBEST GUYS IN THE ROOM

May 1 2008 - AN ARRESTING DEVELOPMENT

April 24 2008 - Just TWEEN you and me

April 17 2008 - A Day at the Movies

April 10 2008 - Stop the (March) Madness!

April 3 2008 - Heaven's Gate Revisited

March 27 2008 - ACTING OUT - A great actor working with sub-par material

March 20 2008 - TECHNO ROBBER BARONS - When daylight savings time ruins my taping of The Wire

March 13 2008 - DAMN AGES - Growing up is hard to do

March 6 2008 - CULT OF SADNESS PART 2 - How tearjerkers still baffle me!