Television

This morning, I was looking at some old television programs on the Hulu site. In particular, I watched an episode of th Adam-12 show. Now, I recall that as being a fun show -- the bad guys always lost, and the main characters were usually interesting. I guess I knew at the time that it wasn't completely realistic -- but who watches television to see complete realism? But, upon sitting there, watching it this morning -- I was astonished at how lame it was. In one scene, two cops get thrown around the room by a wrestler who's about seven feet tall, and only after the intervention of his diminutive wife does the guy allow himself -- and her, as it happens -- to be meekly lead away. In another, they chase bank robbers out of a building, capture one, and find - that its a woman! Imagine that! Makes you wonder -- what will the television watchers of thirty years from now -- assuming there are television watchers then -- think of whats on today?

Actually, my wife and I were talking a little about television the other night. I mentioned that I had been surprised to learn, a while back, that the guy who played the main character on the Roc series, Charles Dutton, is not only not the easy-going, affable person that the character is (which isn't all that unusual; that's why they call it acting) but more that he had been something -- consultant, director, I forget -- on a program (HBO, I think) about drug dealers in Baltimore, and that he was pretty hard-nosed about why they wanted him -- in essence, that these white guys wanted to have a black guy obviously with them so that they wouldn't get killed while they were in the tough neighborhoods where the program was shot. He was apparently quite scornful of their attitude -- I don't think he used the phrase 'house nigger', but that was the idea -- and only agreed to participate when it became apparent that they weren't exploiting the neighborhood, but actually showing what it was really like to live in that environment. My wife said that she wasn't all that surprised, as she'd always though that the Roc program was realistic, in a way that other black-family-based programs, such as the Cosby show, never were. The kids on Roc didn't have snappy patter; the adults weren't either brilliant or stupid; everyone didn't always get along, though they usually did. Insofar as the show reflected the style of the main actor, it seemed plausible to her that he wanted 'his' program to be something that didn't reflect the general lets make dad dumb, mom smart, and the kids snappy patter experts ethos. He wanted it to be both funny and real.

The thing for me is, I don't watch TV all that much, but when I do, I want it to be an escape mechanism. I don't watch television to see how life is in the gritty streets, or what its like to be poor. I watch it either to be distracted, or to learn something. Or, of course, to learn that life in California is beautiful all of the time.