What has happened to the state of Prime Time Television? Yes, the writers are on strike but that’s not the issue. Even prior to the strike, television offered shows that did not interest me performed by lackluster actors. The Stars have disappeared from my nights along with their sit-coms.
There was a time in my life, when I watched TV during dinner and through bedtime. Much of that time was spent in the era before the saturation of cable TV which now provides me with over 300 channels of nothing I want to watch. The art of writing an interesting and funny script and the creation of durable characters has been supplanted by the do-it-yourself, one-size-fits-all scripted outline that is the reality show. That it is not to say that a new reality concept cannot draw my attention, however their novelty wears thin after one season. The current Gross National Product of the reality mills is hardly a blip on my radar screen.
I don’t care who Survived, won the Amazing Race, Factored their Fear, Flipped their House, Traded their Spaces, or Got an Extreme Makeover While You Were Out. I’m not interested in who will be America’s Next Top Model, America’s Idol, or what horrid fashions some group of out-of-the-closet amateur designers will Project down the Runway. I don’t care to watch someone chop a motorcycle, Pimp their Ride, Make a Band, or find out What Not To Wear.
Clearly there is no truth in advertising, at least in reality TV show titles. Nothing happening in the Real World or to the Real Housewives of Orange County actually happens in most people’s real world and if Trading Spouses or Wife Swap were true to their titles then the programs could not be broadcast on network TV or basic cable. And in terms of The Biggest Loser? In my book that would be anyone who regularly watches these shows.
I know that this is Nielson blasphemy but the two worst offenders are the two highest rated: American Idol and Extreme Makeover: The Home Edition. I will admit that I watched the first season of Idol with curious amazement but future editions have disgustingly demonstrated that the producers stack the deck with clearly untalented and frequently mentally challenged contestants during the preliminary auditions and subject them to prime time humiliation and spirit crushing cruelty from the pompous British bully. This is just a barely updated version of bringing in the village idiot or foole for the amusement and ridicule by the medieval King and his court. The proliferation of these embarrassing auditions makes me wonder if many of these people come down to the tryouts highly prepared to do their worst knowing that a bizarre performance will increase their chances of obtaining five minutes of fame—kind of the “Let’s Make a Deal” syndrome; the more outlandish the costume the more likely it is that Monte Hall will offer you what’s behind the curtain or the box that Jay and Carol Merrill have on the floor. I wonder how many truly talented singers don’t get their chance to audition because the producers are looking for sideshow freaks to pull in the suckers.
To my mind however, the criminal offender is Extreme Makeover: The Home Edition. Each week Ty Pennington and crew take a deserving and often destitute family, pack them up and send them off to Disney World while they build them a new house. A very noble venture but alas, it’s all for show. Numerous follow-up interviews with the recipients prove that the hastily thrown together house is left with portions that fall apart and/or features that never worked to begin with. A show was recently filmed near us and after the construction blitzkrieg the crew up and departed very quickly leaving the subject family without any instruction on how things worked and left the neighbors with torn up lawns, destroyed landscaping, and denials of responsibility. The premise of this show is generous and heartwarming, but the reality of this reality show is that it is all just a show for the TV cameras instead of the humanitarian effort it is portrayed to be. The pity of it all is that ABC could easily have a follow-up crew make everything right for the homeowner and neighbors, but that is clearly not their focus.
None of this is to say that I have never been a frequent watcher of reality TV. When Cops debuted in 1989 I followed it religiously for several years. But it eventually became tiresome and repetitive. The locations may have changed weekly but the stories did not. The obvious repeated moral of the stories is stinging and depressing; those who fail to take advantage of the education that is offered to them, enter into and stay in abusive relationships, involve themselves or get involved with others who abuse drugs and/or alcohol will eventually have the Fox TV crew come to their town and they’ll be “filmed on location with the men and women of law enforcement”. For reasons beyond my understanding they will sign Fox’s liability release and their humiliating life story will be endlessly syndicated on multiple broadcast and cable channels each day.
There are many television critics and observers who feel that the reality shows are multiplying like rabbits because they are cheaper to produce than dramas, sit-coms, or variety shows. While this may be true I think that an additional and large contributor lies in the fact that the television industry has lost the ability to develop enduring characters and write interesting and funny shows. Moreover, Hollywood has lost the ability to develop TV stars. I grew up on Jack Benny, Bob Hope, I Love Lucy, the Carol Burnett show, Red Skelton, and the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. These shows thrived on great situational concepts, great writing, and having genuine and experienced TV Stars out front. Jack Benny and Red Skelton cut their teeth on vaudeville and then radio.
By the time television came on the scene they were naturals for the medium. Put Jack Benny in any situation and he can save the show by perfectly timing a pregnant pause, a double take, and by exasperatingly utter the word “well”.
Red Skelton could play a comedic character and, like Bob Hope, was a master at the improvised quip.
Jack, Bob and Red passed their legacy on to Johnny Carson who was funny, could think on his feet, time a perfect come-back, was a great straight man, and was at his very best when the bit was bombing.
Ask anyone for their top five or ten funniest moments on television and invariably a Carol Burnett show skit will be near the top of their list. Put Carol, Harvey Korman, and Tim Conway on stage and you had comedic lighting in a bottle. 
Examine the work of Carol, Harvey, Tim, Jack, Bob, Red, and Johnny and you’ll find that the one thing they have in common is that their performance could make a good script better and they could work their way through a bad script and still mine entertaining gold out of it. These folks were true Stars, television royalty and their likes have all but disappeared. Everyone of them was (or still is) genuinely funny, possessed tremendous charisma, and had the ability to light up any room they walked into. The energy in Bob Hope’s eyes and smile could power a moderate sized city.
Go back to the aforementioned list of funniest moments and at least one episode of I Love Lucy will be on the list: Lucy locked in the meat locker, Lucy hawking Vitameatavegamin, Lucy and Ethel at the Candy Factory, Lucy stomping grapes, the “Slowly I Turned” comedian squirting Lucy with seltzer water and hitting her with a pie, Lucy on the ledge with Superman George Reeves, the episode where she tells Ricky she is pregnant, the episode where she has the baby, and any of the “visit to Hollywood” shows. If the top ten funniest moments only contained I Love Lucy shows it would still be a pretty darn good list.
I Love Lucy is a great illustration of everything I have been talking about. It had a superb writing staff and a great group of performers. The show was magic; it was the perfect storm of television situation comedies. It has endured. I Love Lucy ended its original run exactly 50 years ago but it has engaged a new generation of viewers in every decade. My daughters have no use for black & white TV shows and the remote control speeds over them with intense deliberation, unless they catch a split second image of Lucy, Desi Arnez, Viven Vance or William Frawley. The reason is both simple and grand; I love Lucy showcased great scripts performed by sharply honed Stars.
Since the mid-1980’s television performers have been decidedly forgettable. Their shows were a bunch of mediocre, unmemorable time slot fillers presenting generic scripts performed by homogenized casts. It is unfathomable to me that they live on in syndication and that people actually shell out hard earned cash to buy full seasons of “The Nanny”, “Rosanne”, and “The Facts of Life”.
Thank god Desi had the business acumen to demand the rights to the show and decided to film them so we can still enjoy them today. Thank god for the Carol Burnett Show compilations on DVD and thank god for the extensive archives of the best of Johnny Carson. Thank god we have the recorded videos since the days of the TV stars are dead. “Long Live the TV Star”.
