THE REASONS TV SUCKS TODAY
Image : Wo Fat from Hawaii-Five 0. Real villains don’t watch their carbohydrate intake.
I originally wrote this 2 years ago on myspace, but when I realized that things only got worse since then, I updated it.
As I lay here in bed sorely recovering from LLCool J’s Platinum Workout (that shit is serious) watching VHS taped reruns of the sitcom Amen, I’m forced to wonder if there’s anything worth a Ja Rule ballad on TV in 2009. I don’t watch anything these days except for Law & Order: SVU -half the time just to bug out on seeing Ice-T as a cop- so I’m ignorant to what’s out there. Now that I have no choice but to see what is, I must say modern day TV is trash and these network execs need to be placed in a piranha tank.
My first beef is TV villains. Back in the day, the villain on an hour long cop show would represent nothing but fear. Let’s take Hawaii Five-0 for example. Wo Fat was the poster child TV villain, just plain evil . Everybody on Earth has a good side, but Wo Fat was the exception. That dude was just ornery, you’d never want to meet Wo Fat under any circumstances. Ever. Harry-O , McCloud , shit even Knight Rider. The villains (and even the heroes) on those shows, you know when they came to your door they weren’t sellin no god damn Avon and it wasn’t no Jehovah Witness either. You were bout to get splattered for a good 5 minutes with some pimp ass music in the background. They wouldn’t even shoot you, they’d just throw knuckles with you and throw you through plate glass windows until you told em where the ho, the blow or the dough was…or you were carried out on a stretcher, plain and simple. No Mapquest, no GPS, no technology, no special F/X, no shit. Just one knuckle sandwich after another. If you were high tech, you may have gotten a walkie talkie. Similar to the music biz, technology is diluting the final product. I miss a good old fashioned ass whuppin on TV, and cop shows ain’t worth a shit without em. As a kid, you would re-enact the beatdowns on the pillows of your living room couch. Even on Murder She Wrote and Columbo, those old broads were triflin. The bitch would at least put some cyanide in your coffee or something. But Law & Order: Criminal Intent? 12 sub-plots in 3 minutes and some argyle sock wearing water polo champ from Chappaqua is the god damn villain on a crime of passion or some insurance fraud. Zzzzzzzzzzzz. To make matters worse, that show is syndicated on every basic cable channel on the list. Even Gargamel from The Smurfs was tougher than these modern day villains.
If I see one more Emo, V05 Hotlook wearing, N-Sync Max Headroom lookin, TRL pretty boy cop or some Alex P. Keaton, Luke Perry surfer boy playing a serial murderer, I’mma give this flat screen the Sho’Nuff in Daddy Green’s Pizza treatment. Even the heartthrob cops on 77 Sunset Strip had a mean streak. But these clowns…let me stress it…you CANNOT be a carb-conscious onscreen villain. Impossible. Patrick Bateman from Amercian Psycho was the only exception. Villains CANNOT watch their weight, it just ain’t in a villains nature to be health conscious. Picture Wo Fat on the god damn South Beach diet. Not happening. Real TV villains eat snack packs of trans fat and shit out bullets, you can bet your trendy ass on that. Frank Cannon was an outta shape slovenly pig, but when you saw that big black luxury Lincoln Continental on your bitch ass, it was a wrap for you. Barnaby Jones was 147 years old, drank milk and wore a god damn jogging suit, but he even had an aura about him that let you know he didn’t fuck around. Yet in 2009, some model pretty boy on screen with a Fresca or a Coke Zero in his hand is the god damn villain. OK, I believe you.
The young girls already have TRL, Hell Date, Flavor Of Love (Flav went from “Burn Hollywood Burn” to that…wow), The Real World, True Life and Sex In The City (that Gonzo nose bitch single-handedly ruined chances of dating just about anybody in NYC that ain‘t a hoodrat or a foreign exchange student). The stiffs have Frasier, Seinfeld, Friends and all that other un-funny Post-Giuliani New York trash. On Tuesday night before SVU comes on, I may flip to NBC to see what else could be in the line-up, maybe something half decent. What do I get? The Biggest Loser. Getthefuckouttahere. That shit is straight dreck. I won’t even get into the reality shows, they’re too easy a target.
And is it me, or did TV comedies manage to get more milquetoast and less funny? This PC, can’t we all be friends liberal shit ruined comedy. George Jefferson, Fred Sanford and Archie Bunker’s racist, sarcastic and offensive brand of humor was closer to what’s really on everybody’s mind. Let’s not be fooled by President Obama’s amazing achievement, America is still a racist ass country. I’d rather see George Jefferson and Archie Bunker go at it, because deep down that addresses what the majority of Americans have in the back of their minds. Those shows ain’t dated. Ride the L train past the Wilson Street stop for once and you’ll see that right here in New York sweetie. Sweet-N-Low comedy must be destroyed for the sake of human decency. May as well bring back Hazel and My Three Sons and make shit a little more daring. While you’re at it, put everything on BET into the incinerator. I don’t wanna hear about Stepin Fetchit being degrading, half of that shit on BET nowadays makes him look progressive.
Early Def Comedy Jam and Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live= classic. Most of the comedians on BET today= good candidates for crash test dummies. And Richard Bey is from Far Rock Queens, so you know he woulda wooped Jerry Springer’s punk ass in a fair one. I’m tellin you, it all started with UPN 9 and Homeboys From Outerspace…
The moral of the story? READ A BOOK INSTEAD…
July 3rd, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Man I miss the good old A-Team group fights…
July 29th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I think most reality TV is just aiming for a shock. Shows like Flavor of Love and Fear Factor lack quality; the only aim is to shock people. That’s not good enough, sorry. I just read this book called Exec TV by David A. Brensilver in which a filmmaker decides to pander to the masses by filming an execution live. He did it for the shock value. That’s all TV is today. Where’s the quality?
October 6th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
I was going to write a similar blog concerning this topic, you beat me to it. You did a nice job!