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TV:  Homeland Season Finale

Goddamit!!!!  I think they pulled me back in.  I can't tell you how upset I am about this.

I am beginning to actively despise serialized television.  The amount of energy and time these shows ask of us to consume is sickening.  Someone recently said to me, "Boardwalk Empire gets real good in Season 3."  Oh really?  So I need to watch 26 freaking hours of television for something to get good?

I think about Treme and how I actually kind of like the show, but the show makes itself almost impossible to watch with the low stakes, low drama, general unpopularity (no one to talk about it with), and just the time and money and total disregard for plot twists and turns and any action whatsoever.

And Mad Men.  Oh, season 4 is really good.  Who cares?  If I am asked to spend 20-40 hours of watching to reap the benefits of this wonderful, important, drama, my answer is no thanks - I'd rather read a book.  I still have never read Moby Dick.  You're telling me Mad Men is worth my time over Moby Dick?  I doubt it.  Or just a pretty good non-fiction book.  I'm sure it would be better for the soul.

My favorite show of all time has swung back to Seinfeld.  I long for the good old fashioned episode.  It asks so little of you.  You can just enjoy it, get your mind off of work or whatever nonsense your day has thrown at you.  You don't need to consume the 40 hours of prior shows to enjoy it.  You don't need to DVR the damn thing.  You don't need to have some sort of interesting opinion or take on the show.  Even if the episode is lousy, you don't even feel bad for having watched it.  Even a lousy episode generally has a laugh or two.

As good as the Wire was, Season 5 begins to upset and annoy me the more I think about it.  These shows are asking for marriage when all I'm interested in is dating.  They simply ask too much for being TV.  TV is not high culture.  TV is not educational.  TV is freaking TV.  It is the boob-tube.  It is designed to sell you products.  It is designed to get you on your couch and not be productive.  And it is trying to kill the cinema, a better and higher form of experience.

I don't care about all this nonsense today about how TV is "better drama" than movies.  The form - the serialized form - is a gaping asshole trying to suck 5 years of your life away.  We should have seen this coming with shows like Lost and 24.  Just endless circles of consumption spinning around in circles, never doing anything of interest other than trying to rope you in.  Homeland is the worst offender -- we all know what type of crap is going to happen.  We all know it will ultimately be unsatisfying.  And yet they keep coming up with tricks to keep us watching.  What an offensive display.

A movie, in contrast, can be anything.  It can be a new style, a new story, a new character, a new ANYTHING.  Something invigorating.  A classic tale told in a new way.  A TV show can never be anything else than what it already is.

And that is my lunatic rant of the year.