There are probably several ways to do this: by “this” I mean explaining the impetus for this blog, introducing myself, defining my frame of reference and the scope of my interest in television. The quick and dirty way is to lay things out point for point. I am compelled to write about television because it is one of the quintessential mediums of the 21st century. I am a child of the information age. Television fascinates me because of its ubiquity, its seamless insinuation into American visual culture; in America (and many other places), television is, like it or not, de rigueur.
That’s one way, laying things out succinctly. To wit, in this blog, I intend to assay the implications of contemporary televisual experience in its many forms. But this is a blog about television, and so I’d rather introduce myself televisually; I’d rather introduce myself over time, protractedly, because three explanatory sentences cannot convey why I want to think about television or what in fact there is to think about television.
So, let’s start again. Let’s imagine the screen is blank. A blue screen or a test pattern. But let’s watch closely, or we might miss something. You never know.
In the pilot episode of the eminent Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-77), we are met with a rapid-fire progression of information. In the first five minutes, viewers know that Mary has moved to Minneapolis to escape a commitment-phobic boyfriend and that she’s in the market for a new apartment and a new job and a new life. By the end of the first fifteen minutes, we know all the major characters, introduced and encapsulated in brief moments of dialogue: Phyllis, the meddling friend and landlady; Rhoda, the zany upstairs neighbor; Mr. Grant, the gruff boss with a hidden soft side; Murray, the sarcastic news-writer; and Ted, the vain, charmingly-dimwitted anchor. In a mere twenty-five minutes, The Mary Tyler Moore Show pilot offers us all we need to know while simultaneously revealing a narrative field ripe with further possibilities. This give and take of what’s offered to us versus what’s left to discover is the modus operandi of a good pilot.
True, some shows—ABC Network’s Lost (2004-present), for instance—may begin with an extraordinary event that sets the narrative in motion. And most pilots begin with some sort of upheaval, big or small: a new job, a new city, a new relationship, a plane crash, a jail sentence, a death. However, pilots are not about world-making. Like television itself, always “on” even when we’re not watching, a good pilot does not create a new world but welcomes its viewers into an already-existing one. To sell a show, pilots need to make us believe that the characters have been going about their daily business and we are only now, suddenly, voyeuristically privy to their lives. Naturally, this format varies from show to show, genre to genre. Sitcoms like Mary Tyler Moore introduce viewers to the world of the series through the eyes of a character who is also new to her surroundings or whose surroundings have suddenly changed. Dramas like Lost are often predicated on a life-changing (sometimes life-threatening) upheaval. Perhaps ironically, crime procedurals follow the in situ staging methods, if not the content, of sitcoms, setting the stage for their weekly repetition of similar scenario in which only the details change. Certain shows immediately break the fourth wall and address the viewer with a protagonist’s voice-over or conspicuously lay out a conflict that must be addressed through the run of the show. Dead Like Me (2003-2004) and Grey’s Anatomy (2005-present) come immediately to mind as examples of the former, and The Fugitive (1963-1967) and Quantum Leap (1989-1993) are two examples, chosen randomly from a vast sea of possibilities, of the latter. Still, through all these variations, the most important element remains the same. A pilot must, in order to succeed, engage in a tenuous balancing act between giving the viewer enough information to understand what’s going on and leaving enough out to compel the viewer to come back for more.
So, what is this blog? Not an out-and-out drama, as no major event preceded its inception (I could say my impetus was the writer’s strike, but that would be a lie). Certainly, this is no sci-fi show, nor is it a soap opera or a domestic tragicomedy. It’s also not a sitcom, even though I am perhaps a new character in the televisual universe; networks and alliances already drawn, I can only observe and offer my interpretation of what I see. In that sense, this is my voice-over. Hello.
No, this blog is a procedural, an endless repetition of similar-yet-different, a persistent attempt to find answers for questions that may or may not even exist—a detective narrative. However, whether or not it is a crime procedural remains to be seen (what death might merit investigation? The death of television? I hope not, though the threat is on the horizon—in the form of bit torrent sites, the inevitable fallout of the writer’s strike, and reality tv).
I, like many viewers, watch television because I am looking for pleasure, a moment to relax, a break, but I always come away with so much more: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the indefinable.
Through and in the medium of television, we (viewers) are always looking—for pleasure, for entertainment, for intellectual engagement, for titillation, for meaning, for someone with whom to identify, for escape, for love, for money, for amusement, for information, for companionship, for validation—but what do we find?
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(Next Week, Fame, Reality and the Philosophy of Andy Warhol: “Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there then all-there—I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. […]Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it’s all television.”)
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