Looking for Pleasure: imho*

In the spirit of true self-reflexivity—taking its point of origin from my recent post about therapy—I decided to spend a little while thinking about television writing, a real navel-gazing sort of exercise. While I laid out some semblance of a rationale (manifesto?) for my own engagement with television in my inaugural entry of Looking for Pleasure, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at how, what and why other people write about the small screen. Also, it’s good to keep an eye on the “competition.” (Although what exactly we’re competing for, I’ll never know. But, I’m probably losing. So. Yeah.) In any case, I looked at three representative examples from three very different sources in the blogosphere: John W. Jordan writing a published, peer-reviewed online article in the FlowTV journal about the end of the writer’s strike; James Poniewozik, Time magazine’s television critic, writing about the first post-strike episodes of 30 Rock and The Office on his blog Tuned In; and Michael N. weecapping the aforementioned post-strike 30 Rock episode over at Television Without Pity.

First, we have Jordan at FlowTV lamenting television’s inability to address its absence and instead highlighting conspicuous fortitude at expressing self-appreciation for its own presence:

As the networks have begun announcing return dates for shows that have been off-air since the early days of the strike – including some of my favorites, like The Office and 30 Rock – I find it curious how television is treating the issue of these shows’ absence. The first time the networks really seemed to have acknowledged the fact that these shows have been gone has been in their celebratory announcement of their return. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to frame this in terms of how their absence is being erased by the networks through the irony of celebrating their return. A non-acknowledged hole has now been filled, apparently to everyone’s rejoicing. The memory of the strike is overcome by the nostalgia of our return to pre-strike television. I know I watch a lot of TV, but that makes my head hurt.

This makes my head hurt, too. I completely understand what Jordan is getting at: the lack evoked by television’s post-strike ellipsis of the actual strike; television is just back, but refuses to acknowledge why it was gone in the first place. However, I’m not exactly sure I’m on board with his tone. Read the whole article and you’ll realize that Jordan is berating television (or, I guess, the producers and programmers and network execs, since you can’t really berate an object) for dancin’ a little sidestep à la the song sung by the politician in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (my words, not his—I’ve just been trying to find a way to use TBLWiT in an analogy somehow and this seemed apt). Television executives, like politicians, are extraordinarily good at eliding the truth—we need look no further for proof than the sketchy negotiations during the strike itself—but is this really all that curious? Sure, television is a medium that depends on its audience’s fidelity to keep it chugging along, but politicians also rely on their constituencies and that doesn’t make them any less likely to gloss over unpleasantness. Actually, just the opposite is usually the case. Call me cynical, but I would have found it curious if television had acknowledged the strike as something more than an unfortunate unnamed hole in its programming. People are easily convinced to forget about things they wished hadn’t happened in the first place, so why would execs acknowledge their tyrannical grasp on the industry and its workers when it’s far easier to unequivocally celebrate television’s “return?” Aren’t we happily convinced to celebrate with them?

Case in point, Time writer Poniewozik’s review of the “welcome back” episodes of The Office and 30 Rock, in which he writes a comparative analysis of the two shows and only briefly hints at the ramifications of their return:

To overgeneralize a little, 30 Rock is mainly about jokes and The Office is mainly about characters. Neither approach is inherently better than the other. But last night I found myself laughing louder at 30 Rock, while enjoying The Office more overall. […] I'll be interested to see how the rest of the strike-shortened season plays out, though. Unlike 30 Rock—which is a hybrid of serial and standalone elements—I'd think The Office would suffer more from losing episodes in which to develop the season's arc, and I worry season 4 will seem rushed from here on out.

Poniewozik makes clear his adoration for both The Office and 30 Rock (as I nod in agreement) and provides compelling reasoning for how these shows can sustain completely different audience types and still hold together as a back-to-back pair in NBC’s line-up. I really like his style, although he is a critic through and through, which is necessarily very different from Jordan’s academic perspective. Poniewozik, as someone paid to review television shows, has to be invested in its return, rather than its absence.

And, last but not least, one more example from Michael N’s 30 Rock weecap at Television Without Pity:

[…] this doesn't look like the Discovery Channel. Wait, she's still talking. Tina Fey wants to know who is behind the quote in the paper and the room full of staffers shrug in unison. Now Jonathan walks in and asks her to go see Jack Donaghy in his office. Alec Baldwin? She demands a fess-up from the staff before she goes, insisting this time she will not be taking the bullet for anyone. Frank denotes: "This is bad. Real bad," and then the TV in the room that is set that night's finale of MILF Island focuses in as the MILF Island host squarely says "Prepare for the craziest night of television of your life." Wait a minute ... the strikes over? The strikes over! The strikes ova!!!

First expressing false confusion and then very real glee at the thought that he’s watching a new episode of 30 Rock rather than the Discovery Channel (used to fill the strike-shaped void), Michael somehow manages to simultaneously merge the varying foci of Jordan and Poniewozik’s posts while doing something completely different. The rest of the weecap outlines the episode while commenting on its efficacy, humor, narrative, etc., but he clearly signals through his enthusiasm that television is not alone in its celebratory post-strike amnesia. Writer’s strike? What writer’s strike?

The end of the writer’s strike as the return of the prodigal medium. As we all shout “hoorah, television is back!” (and kill fatted calves), the writers have been here all along, doing what they felt was right. When do we celebrate that? And, as fellow writers who rely on television to do what we like do to, whose side are we on?

*IMHO is the netspeak acronym for “in my humble opinion.”

[Author’s Note: Writing about writing about television proved much more difficult than I thought it would be, although I can’t say why. In any case, many apologies for posting this a week later than planned.]

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