Thursday, October 11, 2007

the banality of chit-chat

So I've been watching some of the new television shows and I've decided that I don't care any more. I'll still watch The Office and Monk, but I don't care much about anything else.

I think it's because I've had my fill of meaningless chit and pointless chat. I tried to watch The Bionic Woman, but her puny arguments with her sister are driving me to drink. More. And on a school night. I felt this way last year with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; it was just people talking at each other like they were conscious of the audience listening (until the audience stopped and the show was cancelled).

I used to think the dialogue in How I Met Your Mother was clever, but now it bores me. What happened to shows like M*A*S*H (the early years) and Moonlighting and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer? I feel good about Pushing Daisies, but it's only been a few shows, so we'll see if they can keep up the clever banter. I think that's the key; I want to hear clever banter that feels natural for the show.

"But the characters are just like you," I can hear the television network publicist cheering. Really. If I wanted to watch characters just like me, I'd look for a show where the protagonist puts on a cape and crams his giant ass into a pair of Batman Underoos and jumps from the couch to the love seat and back and forth until he falls down and bangs his head on the coffee table. Do you have a show like that? Bill O'Reilly? Really? Let me see... talks like he just banged his head, giant ass,... but no, those aren't Underoos. I think that's a Batman tattoo.

[note: I don't know anything about Bill O'Reilly, or his tattoos, but he seemed like an easy target for this gag.]