I’ve been thinking about television series and their endings and their popularity I heard, just barely, that the TV series Friends had its final episode last week. Fortunately, snob that I am, I never saw Friends. Nor did I ever view an entire episode of Seinfeld nor (shudder) Sex and the City nor American Idol nor Oprah nor Survivor nor, to go back in time, Dallas. When all my friends were wondering “Who shot J.R.,” I was wondering “Who is J.R.?” I satisfied my curosity by asking someone, but I still don’t know who shot him. I do try to keep up with what’s going on in the TV world for the sake of “relating to the culture,” but I’ll admit to being mystified by the popularity of most of what is offered on network TV. Three of the shows I mentioned above, as I understand it, were about the sexual escapades of twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings in NYC or maybe Philadelphia. Anyway they’re all somewhere up North where I suppose that sort of thing is entertaining. I’m even interested in foreign and exotic cultures, but this one just seems tawdry and rather boring.
Another three of the programs entertain by embarrassing people–except I heard that Oprah foreswore that sort of programming a few years ago. I’m not the least bit interested in watching “reality television” which is not so much real as it is unreal and totally alien to anything I see or hear about in my community.
This is not a “what is the world coming to” sort of post as much as it is a “what am I coming to” musing. Popular culture and I seem to have parted company about 15 to 20 years ago, and I’m not sure we’ll ever come together again. The last popular TV show I remember watching regularly was The Cosby Show.