You can tell a winter night in Rehoboth. We were
watching sports at the bar at Cloud 9. Now before you picture that crowd
watching football, let me tell you that the sport we were watching was the
Dog Agility Trials on Animal Planet.
There we were, a bar-stool cheering section
hollering, “Go, Sparky!,” “Atta Boy, Rufus!”
We had everyone rooting for the four-legged
critters—even our bartender. “Hey, this is great,” said one patron.
“I was in Arena’s the other night and every TV had football or
basketball. I decided not to ask if they could change to House &
Garden’s Trading Spaces.”
Smart move. I could just imagine.
But as much as I like the dog shows, the rest
of TV is a sludge pool lately. I should sue CSI for loss of consortium.
That’s right, after two decades, my mate
and I no longer watch the same television programs. It’s not that I
don’t like mysteries and documentaries. It’s just that somebody replaced
Murder She Wrote with Murder She Showed Us in Disgusting Detail.
With the highest rated shows being Crime
Scene Investigation and Law and Order, guts and gore have completely
engulfed television. Luckily, it’s not smellovision, but that’s gotta be
next.
Used to be, when you saw a little leg on TV
it was the Rockettes or Miss America Pageant. Now you get some pathologist
holding up an actual little leg. It’s disgusting.
Take CSI. I love the idea of forensic
pathology. I loved it when Jack Klugman’s Quincy was on the tube,
explaining how some barely detectible poison killed the guy everybody hated.
But that was the key. He explained it. Now
the pathologists show it to you in living, pumping color. And not just under
a microscope. There’s always a big, full-screen zoom of an excavated
corpse with identifiable organs. For this I need a 32-inch screen?
And if it’s realistic, that’s one thing,
but CSI and some of the other shows now go in for special effects and
futuristic travels through the esophagus of life. St. Elsewhere meets Star
Wars.
And I love the TV Guide descriptions:
“Horatio examines a torso found in the stomach of a tiger shark.”
Um…what else is on?
I was watching the Learning Channel the other
day and they were showing me stuff I didn’t need to learn. I mean there
are lots of topics good to know—like how to escape a sinking car or
survive a smoky fire, even if I’m lucky enough never to need the
knowledge. But give me a break, there is absolutely NO WAY I’ll ever
accidentally participate in an 18-hour heart-lung transplant. Exactly who is
the learning channel trying to teach? Interns are sleeping.
And with the “if it bleeds it leads” TV
news mentality, we’re certainly not spared platelets on the six o’clock
news, either. Why should I invest in one of those new large screen plasma
TV’s when all I’m able to watch is large screen plasma?
All this is just a preface to tell you that
my spouse loves to watch this stuff. I try to stick it out and watch what
she watches, but it always reaches a point where it gets way too disgusting
and I have to leave the room. Not only am I thoroughly grossed out, but I
never find out who dunnit.
Of course, sometimes, I have to come up for
air or popcorn. This is one instance where these shows might be valuable. I
can waltz through the TV room on the way to the kitchen and be involved in
an amputation or a hysterectomy. An inadvertent glimpse of somebody’s
oozing vital organ is one of very few things that can make me lose my
appetite. For me, CSI can be minus 23 Weight Watcher points.
Channel surf and it doesn’t get any better.
Yesterday, over on Animal Planet, I caught a big slobby sow (or was that
Anna Nicole Smith on E!?) birthing a dozen slippery, gooey piglets. “Here
ya go, Louise,” says the vet, “let me see your teats. Yessir, they’re
squirting pretty good. You’re due any second. Here they come!” Waaaay
too much information.
Was that me squealing or the three little
pigs? I huffed and I puffed and I managed to keep my lunch down.
This isn’t Reality TV, it’s Fluid TV. If
ESPN is all Sports all the time, and CNN is all News all the time, then the
rest of the hundred channels is all mucous all the time.
I want to know how this bloody craze got
started. And how to stop it. Even HBO’s Six Feet Under, as ghoulish (and
as fabulous) as it is, can’t resist the temptation to give embalming
lessons. I’m not squeamish about dead people. I’m squeamish about seeing
the telltale signs of why they turned into dead people.
Okay, say this guts and gore craze is here to
stay. Taken to a logical conclusion, the great ratings for entrail TV will
inspire other perfectly lovely programs to get on the blood-bath wagon.
What’s next, Food Network kitchen accidents? The implications for HGTV’s
power tools are horrific. Network executives could insist that Katy and Matt
undergo an on-air root canal. Would Diane Sawyer and Barbara Walters be so
eager to sign million dollar contracts if live electrolysis were part of
their must-see TV deals?
Hey now. How about real bullets on those
political Crossfire shows? There have been days I’ve wanted to start
shooting myself. And land mines on The Great Race or Real World could
follow. The possibilities are endlessly disturbing.
Even Sponge Bob Square Pants is liable to
drown and we’ll get to see his little cartoon self tossing his cookies
after CPR.
So I’m thinking of a class action suit. I
want to bring some class back to the action. TV needs a transfusion. I’m
going to sue the networks for loss of consortium not to mention their loss
of blood. Just like that old Faye Dunaway movie Network, I want to scream at
the TV, I’m angry and I don’t want to watch it anymore!!!!!
It’s like my favorite line from the old
play Butterflies Are Free. After coming back from a contemporary play, a
mother tells her son she’s disturbed by the violent content.
“But Mom,” says the son, “Those things
are all part of life.”
“Yes, she says, “so is diarrhea, but I don’t classify it as
entertainment.”
Amen.
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