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Things I Hate About TV: Sopranos! Lost! Idol! All day! Every day!
by Joel Keller, posted Mar 13th 2006 7:51PM
If I may put on my curmudgeon hat for a second... ahem...Dammit! I can't deal with this crap anymore! Here is what the entertainment press seems to consist of these days:
Sopranos! Lost! American Idol! More American Idol! More Sopranos! More Lost! Lost Idol! American Sopranos! SoIdol! Lopranos!
ENOUGH! I'm getting tired of the entertainment press overhyping certain shows to the point where I don't even have to watch them to know exactly what's happening on them.
(Just ask me the names of all the previous Idol winners. I know 'em like I know who won the last four Super Bowls. And I haven't watched more than five seconds of the show since it began. That's the power of media saturation, folks.)
Yes, I understand that The Sopranos and Lost are quality shows with big fan bases. And yes, I'm pretty sure that if I actually saw them, I'd like them (I don't have HBO and don't intend on giving my life away to Sopranos DVDs, and I've already expressed my reasons why I don't watch Lost). As for Idol, well, I just won't touch that show with a sterilized 20-foot pole. I just don't want to have the minutae of each show shoved down my throat on a daily basis by the print and electronic media.
You know what set me off? The endless coverage that the just-started season of The Sopranos received in my -- and the show's, considering we're both based in New Jersey -- hometown paper, The Star-Ledger. For the last two weeks, I couldn't open the damn paper without seeing a shot of the mugs of either James Gandolfini or David Chase. Episode breakdowns; profiles of every two-bit mobster character actor on the show; previews of previews; and finally, the review of the show itself today. Critic Alan Sepinwall, who wrote most of the material about the show, details the extent of his exhaustive coverage on his blog. The show was in my face so much, I spit out my coffee in anger every time I saw yet another new article.
I couldn't escape the show by picking up another paper, though; there was extensive coverage in every damn paper, from the tabloids to The New York Times, often interviewing the same players over and over. Heck, even my favorite fake news shows were caught in the Sopranos vortex; Stephen Colbert had Lorraine Bracco on his show last week.
This is all just a little insane, don't you think? There are plenty of other quality shows on TV, as we all know. But it seems like the press coverage of them is ridiculously uneven. First Desperate Housewives is the media darling, geting story after story, then Grey's Anatomy comes along and blows it out of the media watercooler. Arrested Development gets blanket coverage until the last episodes run, then everyone forgets about it when The Sopranos comes back after two years. Survivor gets boring and Idol takes its place. Meanwhile, other good shows, like Monk and Two and a Half Men get little or no press attention (especially Men; even though it's the highest-rated comedy on TV, it doesn't even exist to the critics... it's too bad; it's a pretty funny show).
Wouldn't it be better and more interesting if some of the redundant Sopranos or Idol coverage could be given over to other worthy programs (do I really need to read about David Chase in the Ledger, the Times, and TV Guide)? Or in this vast nation of TV watchers are we truly just interested in three shows? Let me know in the comments.
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