I’m old enough that I can actually remember the change in television beginning in the early 2000s, and what television was like before it. Mainly: it was…
Okay, I guess bad isn’t exactly the correct word, because there was some good shit going on. But even the good shit was wrapped up in the way television functioned, which itself was basically bad. I wrote an entire article over here going over the way television worked in the nineties (completely from a ‘casual viewer’ perspective and not as someone who actually worked in the industry, I may be old enough to remember TV changing but I was still a literal child for the entire decade) but one thing I didn’t really mention was
Television Was For the Pure of Heart
There were exceptions, but for the most part of television history your main character had to generally be a decent human being. Maybe they were a little gruff or rough around the edges, maybe the occasionally did something morally wrong. But those occasions were almost always for the shock value, or so the character could learn a lesson and be a better human being after. Any character who was Not a Very Nice Person, Actually, was either the recurring villain, an antagonist, or a side character played for laughs. While movies managed to shake free of the Hayes Code and start showing morally dubious characters they did so with ratings restrictions that kept little pitchers out of the theater. Television is broadcast directly into the home and, as has been made so abundantly clear to us by various weird mom groups over the past five decades, there is literally no way for parents to control what their kids watch on TV. Absolutely none. Every time they try to change the channel in front of their kids the TV zaps them with an electric shock that sends their ass into the wall before switching directly to porn.
People love to describe Seinfeld as ‘a show about nothing,’ and how that particular notion was what set it apart from other sitcoms at the time, but, like, what does that even mean? Plenty of shows back then hung on a flimsy premise. Was ‘these people are friends in New York’ really more nothing than ‘these people work together’ or ‘these people live together’ or ‘these people are friends in New York?’
No, the real special sauce of Seinfeld was that it was a show about four people who were, objectively, terrible. Just the worst sort of assholes you never want to run into outside of work. Further, the show wasn’t pretending that they weren’t assholes. That, I think, was the real thing that set the show apart. If I met any of the characters from Friends in real life I would probably cut them off and block them for being chronically toxic within the year (except Phoebe, who honestly doesn’t deserve any of the others’ bullshit) but the show tries to frame them as people you would actually want to hang out with. Meanwhile, everyone on Seinfeld is an asshole, and what’s more, everyone else in New York treat them like they’re assholes.
Seinfeld walked so It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia could run.
In the 90’s Seinfeld was an anomaly. Main characters were supposed to be morally good people who sometimes faltered to teach viewers lessons. This lasted until around the late nineties when someone at HBO went, “Hey, what if we started writing characters that were the worst people you’ve ever heard of in your entire life and made people stare at their bullshit for an hour a week?” And the rest is history.
Now We’re Left With the Assholes
Okay, not every single main character on television prior to 1999 was a Kansas farmboy with a heart of gold and a desire to help little old ladies across the street and get kittens out of trees. There were a lot of bastards. But Jesus Christ in a zip up hoodie, compared to some of the characters we get these day every single character on television prior to The Sopranos was a Little Rascal.
I’m writing this because my husband and I are in season three of Succession and honestly I don’t know if I can take an entire other season. These people are all irredeemable. They just scream at each other, or say vile things, or literally push each other down and laugh about it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very good show and the writing and acting are phenomenal. Don’t we have enough of these people in the real world? Aren’t we constantly subjected to all of their bullshit whims and opinions all the time because they think we care? Doesn’t a show like Succession only bolster their stupid opinion that the rest of us care about them? Every single episode the only thing I’m rooting for is a meteorite to kill them all.
We’re also watching The Sopranos. Maybe that’s where my frustration is coming from. Maybe you can’t watch more than one of these ‘Look at These Pricks’ shows without your spleen bursting. But then you’re basically not watching television at all because apparently the Golden Age of television is all about assholes. Before Succession we were watching White Lotus. Everyone loved Mad Men back in the day and Don Draper was a human centipede of loose morals and psychopathy. I never watched that You show but it’s about a literal serial killer. I also never watched Game of Thrones but I’m pretty sure you could set any of those characters on fire without an ounce of remorse.
I Just Want Prestige TV Where I Actually Like Someone, Please
Someone. Anyone. One person. One single person. And I swear to fucking God if someone suggests Ted Lasso I will pull the plug on the entire internet because the only thing I want to watch less than the Roy siblings use each other for disgusting rituals is Dad Jokes Ahoy.
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 