| By :
Mark Etinger
Television used to be called "the vast wasteland" and in a way I suppose they were right. Of course there were always exceptions to this cynical attitude about the world of TV. Whether it was classy Masterpiece Theater style movies on PBS or the aggressive and insightful news coverage of 60 Minutes there was value to be pulled from the spots between game shows, cereal ads and The Beverly Hillbillies. Television had a lot of daily entertainment value but to many that was not a value at all, and among what these critics saw as the frivolity of the medium even the high brow areas of television seemed crumby. Of course these days television is in something of a Golden Age. Many older people would argue that the era of The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy was the actual golden age. These people are complete and total morons. Instead, we look at the complex television shows populating much of our airwaves or bandwidth as it were. We have sophisticated dramas that refuse to take easy routes through their premises. Shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones keep us spellbound and captivated without hand feeding us neat endings and predictable plot points. We have comedies grounded in real characters with high rates of jokes that could wiz right by even the sharpest of wits. Shows such as Parks and Recreation, Louie, 30 Rock, Community, and It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, make watching television sitcoms not just rewarding in laughs but occasionally challenging. Even the junk on television be it the Jersey Shore or Gossip Girl attacks their genres with more stylistic know how and depth than their respective areas of the cultural landscape has ever seen. Of course television being an easy target continues to have it's detractors. People who do not realize that it is a powerful medium often being used to create some of the best art around. Of course in recent months more and more film makers and especially film critics have paid clear unbridled tribute the advances being made on television. In fact many of your favorite and most respected film makers have chosen to leave the cozy confines of the big budget film world to make their way onto television. Often they even skip the major networks in favor of cable. This all suggests that television is in a different place now. We have all grown up loving it and understanding it and now finally it is serving us as the smart audience we always sort of thought maybe television could tell us we were.
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