SOME TV SHOULD STAY STRUCK
by Daren Foster
Years from now, you’ll find yourself sitting in a rocking chair with one of the grandchildren on your lap, telling your sorrowful tale of late-07, early-08, of the time when all the televisions stopped working. That young child staring up at you, the progeny of your progeny, might not even know what this thing is you call ‘television’ and why it was so important to you. But they’ll recognize the hardship in your voice. Able to sense the trials you faced, the tribulations you endured, the wee one will snuggle closer in an attempt to alleviate the suffering as only a grandchild can. The Greatest Generation? We’ll leave it for future historians to decide. Where were you when the writers went out on strike and TV ceased? How did you make it through those 100 torturously long, wintry nights? If you’re being completely honest with this impressionable child, you’ll admit that TV didn’t really stop. It sort of petered out in dribs and drabs like your tennis game. First the knees went, then the shoulder, and suddenly your backhand simply stopped working. It was more of a slow excruciating withdrawal than going cold turkey. Too complicated for a child to understand. Besides, embellishment is a grandparent’s prerogative. You had to put up with it, what with all that talk of your grandparent’s 40-mile walk to school, uphill both ways, through 9-foot snow drifts, sharing one winter boot between all 8 brothers and sisters. Just because it wasn’t the siege of Stalingrad doesn’t mean sacrifices weren’t made. People had to while away the time doing other things besides watching TV. Hobbies, reading, conversing. Much was made of the baby boomlet we experienced the following September-ish. That’s how desperate things became. For those of us brave souls who tried to tough it out, it all seemed so easy at first. Who cared if the number of scripted shows dwindled? We were shelling out healthy monthly fees for countless other channels we never watched that would now finally come in handy. They would stem the flow until ‘real’ TV came back. And who knows? Maybe their offerings would be so engaging, so life-changing and affirming that when the strike was eventually settled, there’d be no rush to go back. All of our television needs would be met outside of basic cable. This is the zone where retro, ‘factual’ and lifestyle programs reign. Endless channels showing us how to cook or renovate our homes, where gay men tell the straight world how to dress and, in a pinch, you can re-discover series that, inevitably, will never be as good as you remember. After several evenings surfing this terrain, I could not shake the thought: I’m paying how much for these channels?! Companies fought tooth-and-nail to secure a presence in the last of the analogue space and on the new digital frontier only to fill both with low-budget, eminently forgettable dreck. Seriously. Is there an actual audience out there itching to watch people refurbish their bathrooms or make dining table centrepieces? If so, why? Isn’t this the reason reference books exist? And please, I’ll take my television chefs cheerfully nipping at the cooking sherry over the faux-warriors that strut and preen on the Food Network’s 6-hour daily loop. You’re making risotto, guys, not banging out a comprehensive peace plan. Watching these shows is like sitting through one long infomercial, the emphasis emphatically on the (com)mercial, not the info. It’s almost as if we’re being dared to watch. Like a twist on Mel Brooks’ classic movie, The Producers, just how dreary and boring does a program have to be to still attract viewers? Even the so-called educational channels, your Discovery Channel, your National Geographic Channel, your History Channel, have only the most perfunctory grasp of how to appeal to an audience: Conflict! When Animals Attack! When Nature Strikes Back!! When Good Weather Goes Bad!!! I found myself unable to continue watching these channels, even for research purposes. It struck me that if parents really wanted an effective way to punish their wayward children, they shouldn’t cut off their TV privileges. No, they should sit them down in front of HGTV for a couple of hours. Please, mommy, make it stop.. make it stop.. please.. mommy. Randomly flipping channels in an attempt to find anything resembling entertainment, I landed on one of the CSI franchises. The original one, I think, but didn’t care enough to wait and confirm, so I flipped again. CSI: Miami. A little more enticing, what with the built-in cheese factor of David Caruso’s sunglass acting but I wasn’t feeling that desperate yet. Another channel flip, another CSI. New York this time. Ah, Gary Sinise. I hope you’re making a boatload of money, sleepwalking through this. Flip. CSI: Miami again. A different episode although Horatio is still wearing his sunglasses. Flip. CSI, the original. I can’t tell if I accidentally switched back to the earlier channel. Flip. Yet a third episode of CSI: Miami, this one, Horatio isn’t actually wearing the sunglasses but they’re in hand, on hip. It turns out that at anytime during primetime, at least one episode of the CSI franchise is occupying space on the television, somewhere. Quite possibly, a CSI channel is in the works. It seems that viewers can’t get enough of these shows. A debate rages among CSI devotees over which one of the three shows is best although I’ve never heard anyone make a passionate case for New York. The old school comes down resoundingly for the original, contemptuously dismissing anything to do with Miami. It’s like some rank amateur came along and attempted to steal the magic formula, managing only to soil the franchise in the process. Newsflash, everyone. Take away the hi-tech forensic toys and glossy finish and all three of the CSIs are just variations on the standard 1-hour police procedural that have populated network TV from its inception. CSI: New York is CSI: Miami is CSI is Murder She Wrote is Matlock is McMillan and Wife. A typical episode goes something like: murder, clue, clue (usually somehow involving the murderer), red herring, 1st suspect, suspect cleared, red herring, 2nd suspect, clue clearing the second suspect but connected to the second clue, leading to the arrest of the actual murderer, incontrovertible proof of his/her guilt, confession. There’s nothing magic or top secret (or unique or groundbreaking) about the CSI formula. Or the Law and Order formula. Or the American Idol formula. Or the-- “Grampa? Grampa? Grampa?!” A little voice calls out, pulling you from your reverie. How long have you been going on like this? The child on your lap wants to know why, if this thing called television bugged you so much, you missed it when it was gone. From the mouths of babes, eh? Truth is, when the dust settled and the strike was over, you realized life had proceeded perfectly well without television. If anything, the break helped separate the wheat from the chaff. The scales fell from your eyes. Most of what TV providers tried to unload was chaff, old, dank, bitter chaff. Like increasing numbers of the audience, you found your entertainment elsewhere. Movies, DVDs, the Internet which, not so coincidentally, was the prime reason the WGA went out on strike. The television you once knew and loved was in terminal decline and you really didn’t care. Not that you’d admit this to the younger generation. Your loss has to be seen as their gain. You point out that you sacrificed television so that they would be spared the heartache of ever suffering its crushing banality.
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