TV Shows We’d Like to See
My Suggestions for the Television GLUT
There are lot of things our civilization needs. We need population control, a way to keep plastic out of the oceans, better health care, a religion that provides identity but can’t be warped into secularism, etc., etc. One thing we don’t need is more TV. We are awash in TV. There is, as the kids say, a metric fuckton of it. There may even be more TV than there is plastic in the ocean. Perhaps the only good thing we can say about the glut of TV is that it doesn’t kill whales… directly.
With full knowledge of the glut, I still want more. I am unsatisfied by the current offerings. You might see this as a pathology or character flaw. I say I was made to be thus. Our degraded culture taught me to consume my way out of problems, and the fist step of over-consumption is to look for more. I want more. More is better. Less is worse. If the current offerings don’t give me what I want, I look for more.
So below I have listed some of the TV Shows I Want to See. I would skip right to them but then what would I do with all of the excess dreck I have built up by not writing for two weeks? You’ll have to wade through that, I’m afraid.
When you are a crank, as I am, you complain about everything. I mean everything. Someone could give me a free vacation in the Caribbean and my first thought we be “Oh, shit, now I have to pack a suitcase.”
I watch TV, so I complain about TV. I complain about what’s on, what’s missing, the times things show, and the commercials. Did you know that on digital TV… the kind you get free from the air… the ads are as repetitive as they are for “online” channels? I don’t know what happened.
Gather round younglings and Uncle Gutbloom will tell you about the olden days. Back before the digital flood, when TV was free and you got it by sticking a coat hanger into a hole in the back of a box of tubes, each commercial break had a different set of commercials. We watched the commercials unless we had to pee or make a bowl of cereal. The other people in the room, for in those days we watched Television communally, would yell “On” at the top of their voices so that you could hurry back and not miss anything.
So, I’m even annoyed by the commercials nowadays. maybe sometime soon I will write a post called “TV Commercials We‘d Like to See.”
Here are the shows that would make my life better. If you are a TV person or “show runner” please make them for me.
The Substitute
Show Title: The Substitute
TV Genre: Reality Television
High Concept: A dystopian Room-222
One of my rumination rants is how Cops and Teachers do essentially the same job with different tools. Everyone who is in prison or jail right now was in a classroom for at least 12 years.
If cops can have a reality show that reveals the mundane weirdness of their jobs, then why can’t teachers? The probable problem is obtaining permission to film other people’s children. My bet is that if you went to a school district and said to the parents, “we are going film your children periodically during the school year for inclusion in a reality television show” all the parents would sign the release. What better way to start your kid’s “influencer” brand than by having them discovered in elementary or middle school?
My proposed show is not about teachers, though, it’s about substitutes. We just film what substitutes go through on a normal day of substituting. Kids switching seats, changing names, not watching the movie that was left for them to watch, etc., etc. If that isn’t enough “drama”, we do things like put the sub in a middle or high school classroom without a set of sub plans, or have the sub take over the French class because he or she “knows some French” and then fill the class with native speakers.
Another good trick to play would be to have a kid fake a seizure or anaphylaxis and when the substitute asks, “what’s going on?” have the other kids scream “Get the health plan” but not provide a health plan so that the hapless sub is left sorting through papers on a messy desk while a kid flops around the back of the classroom. Come on! That’s entertainment!
The [insert celebrity] Show
Show Title: The __________Variety Show
TV Genre: Entertainment!
High Concept: An updated reality show without the judges.
I won’t go into the history of variety shows, but suffice it to say that when I was a kid we watched a lot of them. We even watched them in syndication, and through that process I knew who the stars of previous generations were. I’ve watched a lot of Bob Hope, but Bob Hope was of my parents’ generation. I know who Jimmy Durante is because he would get trotted out occasionally as a big star. I knew he was a big star because he had his own show!
So, my complaint nowadays is that the modern variety show… things like “America’s Got Talent” or “So, You Think You Can Dance” spend way too much time on the reactions of the judges. If the celebrity judges are so interesting, why don’t they make them part of the act? That’s what we used to do.
Who are the biggest stars of today? I don’t know. In the old days, you had to be a REALLY BIG STAR to have your own variety show, and even with that some of them bombed. Judy Garland’s show got cancelled after one season.
Now, doesn’t it pique your interest to wonder who is a big enough star to carry a variety show today? Beyonce? Louis CK? Madonna? Taylor Swift? Which is bigger achievement, being a regular in Vegas or having your own full-throated variety show? The variety show host! In the current firmament of stars, only Cher and Dave Chappelle have had variety shows bearing their names. That’s why I don’t know who the big stars are. Big stars host variety shows.
Four Tin Soldiers
Show Title: 4 Tin Soldiers
TV Genre: Western
High Concept: Like Star-Trek Original Series, but a Western
I like Westerns. I watched West World and I have lots of complaints, but for now suffice it to say that I don’t think it was a Western. I enjoyed Deadwood, but I want more.
To me, the West is the American land of Faries and everything in a Western is some kind of metaphor for us as a nation. That’s why I really liked Jim Jaramusch’s Dead Man so much. That’s the America I know.
Our country is really fucked up right now. The very center is not holding too well, so I think we need some moral heroes. I propose a TV show with four “horsemen”; one African-American, one Asian, one Latinx, and one European. Two have to be female.
Each week they ride into a different town, ranch, or outpost where something terribly fucked up is going on. Say one town has polluted water from silver mining, in another bad guys are stealing cows, in a third someone is burning churches. Each week the “ghost riders” take in the problem, solve it, and dispense “justice”, but there’s a catch. They do it all without guns.
I know. A Western without guns! It’s ludicrous, but if we can’t even conceive of a metaphor for America without gun violence, how are we every going to achieve it?
