There is a lot of worthless reality television. I popped my head from behind my iPad this evening to see two people at the dentist. This was not a storyline. There wasn’t anything funny going on. They were just sitting at the dentist about to get dental work done. Seriously.
This is what passes for television? I enjoyed watching television from the 90s with a storyline. I have enjoyed Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (after I made it through all The Next Generation). I have started watching Stargate SG-1 again in addition to various other movies Netflix has to offer.
Kyle Baxter wrote a great piece tonight, The Eternal Adolescence of Beavis and Butt-Head.
Beavis and Butthead—once the epitome of idiotic, crude humor—both seem smarter in comparison to these reality TV show characters, and the show itself does, too.
I watched the show back during the original run periodically and it was very dumb. It very funny. Now, it doesn’t seem to stupid. At least the show had a point, a plot, and an attempted to tell a story.
I think it’s very telling how the quality of television has dropped to the level where these adolescents seem smarter by comparison.
Beavis and Butthead once reveled in being the lowest of the low for television, using it for laughs, but also using it for satire. Now it no longer is. Perhaps that should give us pause about the kind of culture our generation is watching and, therefore, supporting.
I remember being a boy and wanting to be like a professional basketball player. I wanted to be a zookeeper. I wanted to work with animals or for National Geographic. Not to say I had the best role models, but they were not celebrities who reveled in being ignorant drunkards.