Assembly

Early last week I turned on the television and browsed through the channel guide and saw that BBC America had a STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION marathon on. And that's what I did last Tuesday.

And I'm watching it and it's still entertaining after nearly twenty years of not having watched it (although I have watched the movie iterations of this series several times). I still find that Data is my favorite and I've a newly-found crush on Marina Sirtis and Gates McFadden. It's pure cheap sci-fi escapism of course. But it's terrible. As a piece of work, it's bad. It's nothing to do with production values and maybe even the acting. But its structure as a television program makes it bad. The melodramatic beats are basically semaphored way in advance, the tension is only called tension because you want it to be over not because you want to see what happens next, the comedic bits are only there awkwardly to try and shoehorn in some semblance of humanity into this odd construct of television, the lack of suspense is pretty much guaranteed because STARK TREK - any of its derivations - is the basic good guys versus bad. I still enjoyed these few hours of television nostalgia, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it again at some point (if I could manage to get my hands on some DEEP SPACE NINE episodes that'd be sweet!). But it doesn't mean it's not bad television.

Yesterday, Corey told me about the latest episode of GLEE, a television program he enjoys very much, and is apparently very popular and I don't understand why. But then, it's not GLEE that I've a problem per se: I've never seen an episode and I don't think I will ever choose to [so I might watch it in the future]. No, my problem, I think is with the fact that GLEE, much like STAR TREK is bad because television is just a bad medium, and unfortunately, most people take television to be something so important and relevant and as art. This is my problem with television.

I used to plan my classes around FRIENDS and WILL & GRACE and ALLY MCBEAL. I remember it was because in the first case, of course I wanted to know what happened; in the second case, it was the first time I saw an openly gay (albeit, oddly unfamiliar) male on television; and in the third case, I thought the writing was so clever and Ally was so adorable, I just had to watch. But between then and now, nearly fifteen years later, something happened that made me stop. And I'm not certain what. Corey and I were talking yesterday and I said the same thing. I don't remember really having an aversion to television until I was well into my twenties, and I still watch television shows from time to time (more on that bit later), but it doesn't have any weight to it for me as means of information, as means of disseminating the culture, and definitely not as art. Why am I the odd man out here? I don't think I am.

So, I'm watching STAR TREK and I'm loving and hating it. Hating it because its basic structure for a one-hour drama is of course very evident. You know all the cues, for example, but I don't think you're aware of them. In a show like STAR TREK for example, you've four commercial breaks which means there must be four pseudo-cliffhangers that make you stay in tune so that itself defeats many of the emotional and dramatic suspense you might have, and because this is STAR TREK, regardless of what's happened in the story, you know the status quo will be the same and comfortably back to the beginning, you and the characters and the story are basically back to being where you were unchanged and unaffected. I know what you're thinking: this is fucking STAR TREK for crying out loud! Right. What about the television shows you watch, is this their basic structure? Of course it is.

Television is just bad entertainment not because of the stories it tells (cliches or not, a lot of television storylines are excellent, but are wasted in the medium) but because of how it chooses to tell them.

I looked up the most popular television program currently on network television, LOST, and watched its first half-season ever. The basic story is okay and a little intimidating from one point of view, but possibly too derivative to be taken fully seriously (remember, only seven episodes watched, alright?). However, the pilot episode works pretty well story wise, the acting's decent (actors trying to find their show-voices), and the direction is not bad nor good but, well, bland. But this isn't about story, it's about structure. And LOST, regardless of how good its story or acting or production is (frankly, after the third episode I decided LOST wasn't for me; if it was a book, I would've closed it and returned it to the store by page fifty-something), is pretty much what you'd expect a television program to do. Its use of music to give the audience emotional cues and attempting at ratcheting up drama via horrible camera work, and the little segments of story that just have to have enough information to keep you locked in for a commercial break because it MUST GO TO COMMERCIAL BREAKS, all of that make this program, regarless of story, unwatchable.

(I went with LOST due, really, just to all the fucking hoopla regarding its upcoming end.)

((If I were talking story-wise, LOST is useless, but that's a different and less informed (seven episodes!) opinion.))

Of course, this is the reason why networks like HBO and STARZ make original content because of this lack of 'rules'. Network television is a pop song while paid-programming is a concept record.

I don't recall when I couldn't get past this way of watching television. That decision is somewhere in my memory but I can't remember it. But network television still has two stand outs for me. Still not talking story, SEINFELD and THE SIMPSONS avoided these conventions not necessarily by mere story alone. I'd imagine these two shows' producers chose NOT to do what everyone else is doing (one argument for THE SIMPSONS has been the fact that it's an animated program to begin with) because when I watch them now, yes, they're still entertaining, but I also don't feel the need to disassemble them into their corresponding parts the way that I have LOST and STAR TREK. I get that it's a business model as well as a television program model, but that's where it loses me.

I think television stories can be better told in either film or comic book form in a much more effective and artistic way, but that's another post for another time (yesterday, Corey and I briefly discussed Y: THE LAST MAN, whose writer, Brian K. Vaughan, eventually became a writer on LOST, incidentally.).

I will probably watch GLEE at some point in the future. My boyfriend is a fan and I think his influence might have something to do with it. But when I do watch it, or any other television program, hopefully I can enjoy a story the same way I can enjoy a pop song without the need to recognize its parts and take it as whole instead. And if I can't, that's okay too. I've been okay without regular television for years. I'm sure I'd be okay without it for a few more years as well.