Television Isn't What it Used to Be

I caught an episode of Sanford and Son recently on television. Sanford and Son is a show about people living in the ghetto, from the 1970s.

They did have a laugh track, but the jokes were really funny. I was almost rolling off my chair laughing.

They don’t make television shows like that anymore. With real characters in unreal situations. These days they make reality shows which are supposed to be real, but obviously could never actually happen.

Shows like Beauty and the Geek, where they gather a bunch of nerds and a bunch of hot fashion models, and see who ends up dating who. Or my favorite, Joe Millionaire, where they take an average Joe and make him look like a millionaire, and then they gather a bunch of money hungry gold digging women, and see which one would still “love” him if he weren’t really made of money.

There are other reality shows like Survivor, where they toss a bunch of people onto an island, and expect them to fend for themselves.

These shows are most likely scripted – though they claim they aren’t. How else would they be able to guarantee their sponsors people would watch, if everyone on Survivor died in the first episode, or worse, figured out how to get off the island within a few minutes?

Shows from the 70s and 80s weren’t always realistic, but they were far more entertaining than the reality shows the network trash brass give us.

One of my favorite shows when I was a kid was Emergency – about paramedics and their daily lives. It was a bit of action, some comedy and lots of cheesy 70s references – but it was a great show. If and when I catch it in re-runs, I still watch it.

Then there were all those family sitcoms in the 80s – Growing Pains, Family Ties, Diff’rent Stokes, Who’s the Boss, The Facts of Life – all these shows are still classics. They often had stories which taught us a moral lesson, but there was still lots of humor and good natured drama to them. These shows were based on reality, and could conceivably actually happen – even today.

Shows like Survivor just sell nut balls trying to make money in a pre-scripted game show so unrealistic, only the brain-dead would actually believe any of it was real.

Sad to say, most people that watch television these days must be brain-dead, because they eat up shows like Survivor – which is why the networks keep churning out this crap.

That’s what it really is – crap. Television used to be entertaining. They used to make shows with a purpose, and really well crafted storylines, exceptional dialogue, and solid characters.

These days, most characters are paper-thin, the story lines appear to be created on napkins, and the scripts might as well be written on the same napkins, because they sure don’t hold my attention for very long.

Maybe one day, some television executive will remember about old times, and wake up and start creating shows worthy of watching.

I have over 500 channels on my digital cable, yet I often find so little of value on television, I hop onto the Internet or I go out on my balcony to pass the time.

When I spend less time on my balcony and more time in front of my television, then we know we’ll have finally got something worthy to watch again.