Television Fails

My wife thinks I'm a television junkie.  I'm not really.  If I could do other things I would, but when one gets home around seven o'clock at night, eats dinner and settles down with the knowledge that the whole sequence begins again at five thirty the next morning, there's really little else to do besides surf the net or read a book.  Of course, during the summer months mowing can be accomplished, but during the late fall, winter and early spring, there isn't much else available to do at home.

(Yes, I know my dear wife would love to utilize that time to make our house a temple to antiseptic pulchritude, but to me that's not relaxation.  Especially when I readily admit I don't share her zeal for the art of cleaning.)

Here, then, are three snarky observations from my indolent time watching television:

Commercials:  Every year around the Super Bowl, the commercials get about as much attention as the event whose airtime they purchased.  Some of these ads are good, and others are bad.  The same holds true throughout the year at much less cost.  Where there are clever ads, I applaud the people who created them.  I can think of a couple in particular, such as this one by Summer's Eve:

Another is from Dayquil:

Then there are dogs.  Burger King is the chief loser in this category, with its scary King mascot popping up obnoxiously throughout the night.  So does Dr. Pepper fail (full disclosure:  I love Dr. Pepper, just not its ads) with its football-themed ads.  Papa John's ads with Peyton Manning are lame.  The question I have is who gets paid real money to come up with this tripe?  The people who came up with the Summer's Eve and Dayquil commercials are brilliant.  Not only are the people who devised the Burger King, Dr. Pepper and Papa John's commercials unimaginative, so are the people who approved the ads.

Hyperbole:  Reality shows are all about hyping normal individuals into something bigger than what they really are.  This is never more true than on reality competition shows.  Karen watches The Voice which, having seen the early days of American Idol and a couple of notable performers from that latter show notwithstanding, can't hold a candle to the former show.  That being said, when the field narrows to the really good singers, the judges are at a loss as to how to compliment the singers who are, in my opinion, pretty good.  But the words amazing, unbelievable, best I've ever heard and the like are thrown around so gratuitously that they lose all meaning.  Sure, there are some superlative performances, but the way the vocabulary-challenged judges pronounce it, every singer at this stage of the competition is the best they've ever heard which, in reality, just isn't possible.  I'm not suggesting a return to the days of acerbic criticism a la Simon Cowell, but this idea that to provide constructive criticism that doesn't lay on the schmaltz is against the rules subtracts from the show.  It also feeds into one of my personal bugaboos of trying to rank artistic performance which, much like beauty, lies in the eyes or ears of the beholder.  For example, as good a singer as this year's winner of The Voice, Jordan Smith, is, his voice wasn't as pleasing to me as some of the other contestants.  Perhaps he sings better, technically, than his competitors.  But I would have chose to listen to some of them over him.

Least-Common Denominator Sitcoms:  The show that prompts this observation is 2 Broke Girls.  I don't watch the show and never have, but the ubiquitous commercials, both on television and on the radio, are hard to avoid.  The show revolves around two comely lasses, played by Beth Behrs and Kat Dennings who, from what I can tell, are waitresses in a restaurant and, judging from the title, are perpetually broke.  The humor is ribald at best, low-brow at worst.  I never watched Married With Children because it appealed to the same sense of humor that is centered on scatology.  Shows that target this audience lose me from the start.  I appreciate cleverness, sly humor, things that make me think.  Hearing about someone not wearing clothing and encouraging me to disrobe (from the radio commercial to which I'm subjected every day in the car) don't make me want to watch the show, no matter how hot the women in the show may be.  Again, as with the commercials that fail, I'm stunned that people are paid to put this slop on television but, given the ratings, admit that there must be an audience for this crap.  That there is an audience for it saddens me, but I like the fact that it frees me up for other things.

Perhaps I really should watch less television.

(c) 2016 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles