On Television

I should have taken this advise...(via)

Spring Break is finally upon us, or at least me, I don't know about your particular schedules Imaginary Readers, but for me, this is my one week off from classes this semester, or rather, the only days off I get this semester. It couldn't come soon enough, in a way, because the week leading up to it, was my second set of midterms, and although I only had two this time around, they were far more stressful for me than midterms usually are. I'm not sure why, possibly because of the promise of a break afterwords, albeit a boring one of sitting at home, but a break nonetheless, but for whatever reason, this set of midterms was particularly stressful, leading to some stress induced insomnia and my acne edging ahead of my attempts to keep it at bay in the eternal war I am waging against it, which I seem to be losing, but don't tell it that.

This isn't to say that I wasn't partially at fault for my stress last week, because, as usual, television prevented me from getting as much sleep as I could have. That is to say, I got myself immersed in a television show during the week prior to midterms, which, of course, bled into midterms, and distracted me from studying/sleeping as much as I could have, but that seems to be par for the course with me and TV. The culprit this time was the British drama Downton Abbey, which caught my attention and imagination far more than I anticipated, because British period pieces centered around turn of the century property law do not normally interest me, but Downton Abbey is great, not because of the period specific costumes and the historical accuracy, but rather, because it feels genuine and all of the characters feel like real people. Even those who aren't likable at all have their good sides, however small they might be, and ones who don't seem interesting become the most interesting of all. It tells the story of the people it chronicles really well, which makes it really good, but it also doesn't take itself so seriously that it isn't fun to watch.

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Ultimately, that is what I really enjoy in TV shows, good stories about people. I much prefer character driven narratives to those that are plot heavy, because, while a good plot is always enjoyable to watch, it can often be far to easy to get lost in the details of a complex and convoluted plot, but with a good set of characters, it doesn't really matter what's happening, because the spirit rings true no matter what. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a television snob, or at least I try not to be, because I tend to watch whatever catches my fancy at a particular time, be that an animated kids show, a 20 hour Ken Burns documentary about the history of Baseball, or a campy sci-fi show. I've seen all of Xena multiple times, and quite a bit of various Star Treks, along with quite a few sub-par sitcoms, and unarguable good shows. There are plenty of "good" shows I haven't or won't watch (Lost, Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Wire, etc.), and others that I have watched and even enjoyed or thought were well made but not loved to the extent that everyone else (read: The Internet) seems to (Sherlock, Merlin), as well as plenty of shows that I have loved that even I won't argue are objectively good (Xena, Star Trek, Out of Practice). I can't always tell why I'll like one show and not another, it's all a matter of taste I guess, but it seems to come down to whether or not something about the show really grabs me right off the bat, and if it doesn't, it could be the best made show ever, and I won't really like it.

It probably seems like I watch a lot of television, which I guess I do, but I don't watch TV when it airs, because my attention span is too project oriented to be able to keep up with shows week to week, so I tend to find something to watch after it's either done airing or been on for a couple of seasons and then compulsively watch all of it over the course of what usually amounts to a couple of weeks depending on how busy I am. If I'm watching Downton Abbey, for instance, that is the only show I want to be watching, and I will watch as much of it as possible each day until I am finished with it, within reason because I still have to go to class, study, do homework, and get a reasonable amount of sleep, with sleep usually being what gets sacrificed in my single minded attempts to consume a series.

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I also watch a decent amount of TV because I don't really watch movies, at least not by myself, which I think most people do. There are a lot of reasons that I don't watch movies, to the point that I am nearly culturally illiterate when it comes to movies, ranging from my preference for a longer form of story telling to two hours being a little bit too long for my attention span at times, but I think the main reason is that my family rarely watches movies together. I went to the big releases with my dad, and we would go to, say, the Harry Potter movies when those were first coming out, but for the most part, if we were watching something together at home, it was TV. I have very early memories of watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine with my dad, and of watching the first season of Grey's Anatomy with my parents and listening to [MaternalUnit] complain about how inaccurate a portrayal of working in a hospital it was. I never learned how to watch movies from my family because we never did it, and I never got a good basis in classic movies from them either. I got a very good education in classic television from [MaternalUnit] when we would watch the old shows that would air on a local channel in the afternoons, and I have seen a decent amount of classic shows like Green Acres, Wild Wild West, Hawaii Five-O, and The Addam's Family because of that.

I guess you could saw that I never acquired a taste for classic movies, and as such, I don't seek them out. For instance, I haven't seen Casablanca all the way through, much to [Type A, Likes Baseball]'s chagrin, who keeps trying to get me to watch it by putting it on when I'm hanging out with my friends, but we only ever manage to get about twenty or thirty minutes in before whatever else we're doing, such as shelling peanuts, gets in the way, and no one is actually watching the movie anymore. This means that I've seen the beginning twice, but I haven't really seen the movie. This isn't to say that I don't like movies, because I do like most of the ones that I've seen, I just don't seek them out, and television tends to resonate with me more than movies do. For example, I don't think I've ever cried while watching a movie, wanted to punch somebody, yes, but that was less the movie and more the circumstances and also a story for another time, but I haven't actually been moved to tears by a film. Various TV shows have made me cry on several occasions, not many because I hate crying and generally don't have the best suspension of disbelief, but, for instance, Downton Abbey made me cry at least twice in its 15 episode run.

TV is the main way in which I consume culture, in the same way that movies are for a lot of people, and I love the medium of television, because of the way that it can tell continuing long form stories in short serialized chunks, but that isn't to say that I love all of it. I'm not a fan of reality TV because I come to TV for what is advertised as fiction and escapism or PBS documentaries and not voyeurism, but I don't necessarily think that all reality TV is bad. Fake yes, but bad, not necessarily. Genre isn't really all that important to me, but the spirit of it is. I'll give anything a change, but I make no promises that I will enjoy everything or even everything people say is good. Now, I'm going to get back to watching that Ken Burn's Baseball documentary, because I just hit the 1930s and history is fun.