"A Highly Unlikely Journalistic Endeavor"

Here’s an unusual assignment.

Longtime L.A. Times TV critic Robert Lloyd, whose work I’ve admired for, despite glaring opportunities, his steadfastly refusing to “write mean”, has written a piece defending the merits of current network TV.  His challenging statement:

“… the network fall season might seem to be edging towards irrelevance.  Some would say as much about the networks themselves.  I would disagree.”

Gutsy position, wouldn’t you say?  And yet, there he is, proclaiming, analogically:

“It’s basketball.  But there’s no need to be tall.”

Try that on your harmonica.  (And see if your harmonica doesn’t go, “Stop!”)

Bound by requirements preventing riskier content, today’s network TV – let’s stick to comedy – today’s network “half-hours” feel creakingly “Old School.”

For example, earlier this week, I heard a male character, probing another male character’s date, asking,

“Did you guys… y’know…?”

Sound familiar?  That’s because network television’s been “y’knowing” since the late sixties.  Before which even “y’know” was taboo.

That’s what Robert Lloyd is essentially championing – the ongoing presence of “y’know”!

To me, Lloyd’s defense of network TV feels straw-graspingly scattered.  He jumps from saying that people toiling on NCIS – reportedly the most watched show in the world – are shruggingly oblivious to annual snubs from the Emmys (I seriously suspect that they’re not), to honoring shows where week after week “… even dysfunction leads to togetherness” and “… where what falls apart reliably come(s) back together”, to cherry-picking network classics from the past – and only the past – mentioning The Twilight Zone, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The West Wing and Seinfeld. 

The most recent of which left network schedules in 1998.

Being demonstrably nastier than Robert Lloyd I’d call today’s network comedies, “The ‘soft food’ of broadcast programming.”

Basic cable, premium cable, streaming services – their programs, like them or not:

Innovative, layered, subtle and smart.

I don’t know.  Do you really want to malign “innovative, layered, subtle and smart”? 

That’s like, “College is great.  But don’t knock Sixth Grade.”

At its sensible core, Lloyd’s argument is this:

“Sometimes a person just needs a break.” 

That “break” – from “innovative, layered, subtle and smart”, bless its venerable heart:

Network TV. 

Where you don’t have to think hard.

The shows just pour into your brain.

That, proclaims Lloyd, counter-intuitively, is its valuable asset.

Gastronomically analogizing, Lloyd speaks for “simple and digestible”, saying,

“Sometimes a taste for molecular gastronomy may be just the thing… But other times a peanut butter sandwich or a slice of apple pie with vanilla ice cream would be nice, thanks.”

Okay, sure. 

But there’s a difference.

The peanut butter sandwich?  The apple pie with vanilla ice cream?

They’re still immensely popular.

Today’s network comedies are not.

Proving, says this voice-in-the-wilderness blogger:

Something is missing.

It’s not just the increased competition that leaves the new offerings in this genre ignored by a once much larger viewership.  Come on.  Watch any new comedy today and see if you don’t get to the ending before they do.

You want “simple and palatable”?  Fine.  But throw me a bone, people.  Even peanut butter sandwiches come “Chunky.”

I know.

“Fish in a barrel.”

However, studying “the other side”, which I shall save for tomorrow,

Sometimes, succumbing to network parameters, it’s like,

“It’s so predictable, it’s fresh!”

That’s how smart people survive.  (And cash in big in syndication.)

They stop complaining,

And make a wonderful piecrust.