TV Rant

As we were going to bed a few nights back, Rachelle asked me to put on some mindless TV. I searched Netflix for a minute before coming across The Wonder Years. Awesome. A crowd favorite. Rachelle was asleep before the credits finished rolling.

I watched two episodes. It it struck me that the last show I'd been catching up with on Netflix was another look back at the nostalgia of the 60s: Mad Men. And it popped into my head that I need to tweet, "TV shows about the 60s: Wonder Years > Mad Men." You know why? Its sweet. Hokey. Sentimental. But also real. It's not Leave it to Beaver. Whinnie's brother dies in Vietnam in the pilot episode. Paul and Kevin get caught with a sex manual in episode two, but don't get in trouble because Kevin's mom mistakenly assumes they stole it from her room, then is too embarrassed to admit her mistake.

Mad Men on the other hand is not sentimental or endearing or sweet. There is no love in it. It is compelling drama, but compelling in the same way the videos of Dan Wheldon's fatal Indy car wreck are compelling. We watch to see what will blow up next.

Why is so much of our entertainment these days like this? Mad Men is the latest in the Sopranos family tree. Dexter, Breaking Bad, The Wire, CSI Toledo. These shows are praised as "realistic". They don't shy away from the way life really is. Broken. Painful. Morally ambiguous. Futile. All true.

Even the comedies are nihilistic and depressing. The fact that Two and a Half men has been the most watched show on television says less about the crass sense of humor in this society and more about the depressing view of family and relationships we have.

Life is full of pain and loss and death. But it's also full of love and joy and beauty. Life is hokey and nostalgic and silly too. Why do we gorge ourselves on the negative and throw out the stuff that's seemingly too nice or rose colored? Is pain the only thing that's real?
Does it hurt too much to see love and joy on screen because it reminds us of not having as much as we wish we did? Is it easier to watch Don Draper screw up his kids emotionally because it makes us fell better about our own parenting? Do we need to see corpses to remind ourselves that we're still alive?

It seems to me that connecting to beauty in entertainment makes us better at finding it in real life. Immerse yourself in loving images and it's easier to see love in the world. But maybe it's just The Wonder Years talking.