Borak: The Boredom Will Be Televised

Television is hardly a comfort these days. As I type, I'm watching a series roundup of Grey's Anatomy, and it proves my point that many of the so-called “hit shows” are absolute drivel—there's only so much needless info about who slept with who in a hospital one can take before one slips into a coma. At a time when we need our comfort TV the most—life’s mental ice-cream that sedates us from the ever increasing pressures of daily life—I'm sad to report that there's an alarming rise of airtime devoted to absolutely nothing to watch.

Television in the early days was uncomplicated. The family would gather around it, and have dinner while having laugh at Lucille and Desi—readers who don’t know I Love Lucy, think of it as the Dharma & Greg of your parents’ generation. Simple. Well, that's how it worked in my family anyway and we turned out all right. Not necessarily the most functional tool for family bonding, but it did the job.

Not so now, however. With an almost infinite amount of splintered programming choices—let's not even include web-based channels like YouTube and Joost—there's hardly a moment when everyone would agree to watching one thing at the same time. Television in the 21st century is very much an individualistic indulgence these days.

TV is all about you. You want to be singularly drawn in and tuned out from the rest of the world, particularly annoying people who keep commenting on how they've never met any doctor who looks like Katherine Heigl (hmm...). My point, and I do have one, is that TV has, now more than ever, a greater responsibility to cater to our individual entertainment needs. And it's spectacularly failing at it.

This struck me a few weeks back when I completed the final season of The OC—a series that is arguably the last great guilty indulgence of current television. Caught up in a wave of melodrama, the ending scene of the finale brought to a close a genre that I scarcely believed could exist: the Soapedy. It brought together the best elements of comfort TV—soap opera and comedy—and not to mention helped popularise the indie-rock genre to the masses. On paper, it looked like a mess; it was as if creator Josh Schwartz hammered together a concept in which Steve Carrell played Dynasty's Blake Carrington, with The Postal Service doing the theme song. It was night-time drama at its inventive best.

The '80s too was filled with guilty indulgences that many of us still remember with a glint in our eyes. And with good reason. The kitschy, predictable and softball entertainment of Knight Rider, Airwolf, and MacGyver encompassed all that was needed to comfort us. There's little of that good-natured fun now.

Not that the 21st century failed to produce anything fun. Far from it. But they just turned stale over the years. American Idol 7, America's Next Top Model Cycle 8, and Desperate Housewives Season 4—they all started with the same bright spark of ingenuity, but dwindled into undifferentiated blobs of interchangeable scripts and characters. OK, so I'll give an awesome thumbs up to ANTM's Benny Ninja, the hilarious real-life Derek Zoolander, but I've got little hope for anything else.

When Steven Johnson wrote about the rising complexity of television shows in Everything Bad Is Good For You, I've no doubt that he got it spot on. TV shows are as smart as they have ever been, and reality TV is a revolutionary concept that was wrongly underestimated. What he didn't expect, however, was how long the producers deigned to stretch a song and dance show. After eight friggin' seasons, it’s just not cute anymore.

Give me a break. It's a hard lesson to take, but the fact is that guilty indulgences have short lifespans—four or five seasons the most. Inasmuch as we crave comfort TV as we do our comfort foods, you have to admit that even eating Haagen Dazs' Belgian Chocolate ice-cream for eight years is bound to cause overwhelming nausea.

The OC learned this lesson early on. It went through a rough patch in its third season, losing its way as many hit shows do after making a big first impression. Thankfully, however, it found the grace to bow out on a high and nearly had me reaching for the tissues. I doubt that many TV networks will understand this limited lifespan of comfort TV series, which doesn't bode well for the future. From the way things are looking, it's not all good. American Idol and ANTM have not signaled any intentions of ending, and the hottest show to arrive, a remake of Knight Rider, is just riding on little else but a rehashed script and '80s nostalgia. Expect that to turbo-boost its way to oblivion.

Or at least that's what I hope will happen. Heavens help us if that goes on for seven seasons.

TEXT JOHN LIM

Bio:
On this low note, John Lim is himself gracefully bowing out from this column. He thanks all for reading his random rants.