Emily's TV Curse

For the record: I don’t watch T.V. For the flip side: I DVR movies that pile up at an alarming rate, getting ignored in favor of books almost every single night. Oh yes, and every so often I discover some brilliant TV show that used to make me think, “Oh no. Now every [fill in the night], I have to make sure I’m home and remember to turn on the TV at [fill in the time].” But not anymore, because I have the DVR (which is much, much easier than remembering to have a blank tape available and programming the VCR). Unfortunately, I can’t say, “but not anymore” to the other fact related to almost every one of these shows, which is that, if I’m lucky, it will last an entire season. Remember My So-Called Life?” If you do, it’s probably only because Claire Danes went on to do other stuff, and you’ve read about it. I bet you don’t remember Sports News or was it Sport News? (Even I can’t remember, but it was a damn good show during the three months or so it lasted.) Does anyone else even know that last fall a brilliant, thrilling show called Kidnapped was on the air? I do have to be fair here and note that a few shows, like WKRP in Cincinnati (but that’s only because, like The West Wing, I didn’t really start watching it until it was in reruns), Thirty Something, Once and Again, and News Radio did manage to last a few more than one season, but not many more. And every once in a while, for some unfathomable reason, something that’s pure brilliance like Frasier will defy all odds related to the American television viewing public’s preferences and will have a real TV life. But really, if there’s a show on TV you love to watch, you need to call me and tell me not to watch it, because if I’m watching it and enjoying it, it’s doomed.

These days, I happen to be mourning the loss of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. How could this show not have made it? I’ve just realized that’s a really dumb question. This is America. This is the land in which people want to watch America’s Temptation Island of Stranded Twenty-or-Forty-Something?-Desperate-Back-Stabbing-Bachelorettes. Nobody wants to watch something that’s brilliant and hilarious, that provides them with insight into what goes on behind-the-scenes in a television studio and that makes them think as well. No one wants to watch state-of-the-art acting on television, a place they’ve come to count on for the soap-opera-deadpan-“I-sees” they’ve been addicted to all their lives. Imagine a television show that’s so extraordinarily well done it could be a contender at Cannes. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it just should have been a movie instead. Maybe for a TV show to stand up to the critics (and all the critics loved this one) is a kiss of death in a way that it isn’t for movies (sure, they might not be blockbuster hits, but no one pulls these hits from theaters before anyone gets the chance to see them). Maybe Aaron Sorkin needs to hook up with Martin Scorcese or something.

The next one that’s going to go, I’m sure, is 30 Rock. This one is right up there with News Radio, as far as I’m concerned. Even if I didn’t want to be Tina Fey, I’m sure I’d feel this way. But I don’t get it. Why has this one survived while Studio 60 hasn’t? They’re both behind-the-scenes looks at producing television shows. And one would think that for couch potatoes who never leave their homes, the prime-time-every-other-week-on-the-cover-of-People face of Matthew Perry would be a more familiar one than that of Alec Baldwin, whose last movie was…? Yet, everyone is eating up Alec Baldwin (and I’m not about to say he isn’t absolutely wonderful in the role, because he is), while they couldn't seem to care less that Matthew Perry is becoming addicted to uppers while he and his girlfriend split and the network is threatening to cancel his show. Meanwhile, I’m discovering he has far more depth and range as an actor than I ever knew. And, instead of getting to see how this all pans out, we’re just going to have some pat 2 minutes in which he announces he’s no longer taking the pills, and we're all expected to believe that (despite the fact we all know that in real life, he’s struggled off and on with substance abuse and knows perfectly well this isn’t how one gets “cured”).

Thus, I’ve decided, no matter what, I’m not going to be lured into watching anything that’s being publicized and praised come this fall’s new season. And I am going to ignore the Seinfeld syndrome, because thinking about it makes me feel I need to watch every show from its inception. I suffered from this little-known syndrome for nearly a year, its major symptom being the feeling you will never catch up. You see, I’d read and heard about Seinfeld before I actually began to watch it, and then I had a million unanswered questions I was afraid to ask anyone. This symptom was epitomized by the fans who’d been watching the show since its pilot days and would breezily explain to me, “Seinfeld and Elaine once dated.” What did they mean by that? Were the two going out together during the first season? What had I missed? But then I’ll remind myself that the only reason Seinfeld, a show I came to love, was a success was that I was completely uninterested in it during its first two years. As a matter of fact, the same was true of Frasier. I mean, how often are spin-offs successful? And Frasier had never been one of my favorite characters from Cheers. I wish I could say the same about Studio 60. After all, I would much rather have tuned in to it in 2009 and be asking, “You mean Danny is just Jordan’s baby’s adopted father? How did that happen?” than to see this oh-so-promising beginning crash and burn right out of the starting gate.

Then again, I’ve just come up with yet another argument for reading books. People don’t pull books from your shelves and toss them away when you’re not done with them. And it doesn’t matter at all whether the rest of the American public is reading a book you like or not. You will still get the chance to finish it. And the Seinfeld syndrome? All you hypochondriacs out there are safe from that one as long as you stick to books.