On Television

As a fan of some recent American TV shows (such as Lost, 24 and pretty much everything involving that Joss Whedon), I also agree with Johnson’s argument that TV drama has gotten overwhelmingly more complex over the years in terms of the complexity of the social networks that the viewer has to parse to make sense of the story (compare Dallas with The Sopranos). This is not because Hollywood has gotten any smarter — it’s the fact that the business model has changed. What actually generates most of the income associated to a given TV show are DVD sales and syndication. A show with enough depth to allow multiple viewings and interpretations will be more successful in the long run than more disposable entertainment. (Which, of course, makes it all the more puzzling why Firefly was murdered in its crib, waah.) Johnson even manages to fit reality TV into this model, suggesting that Big Brother and its ilk should not be compared to sophisticated TV drama but past shows such as The Price is Right: compared to them, The Apprentice suddenly seems like the work of intellectual giants.