Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Fall TV Sucks Ass

Fall is here, hear the yell, as TV quality goes straight to hell. Yes, children, summer is over, and since the weather outside is suboptimal, that means we must all hunker down for the next six to eight months and watch whatever Comcast wants us to watch, which lately is a big pile of shit.

The quality of television programming has been on a steady decline as of late: when the Simpsons started really sucking about a decade ago, we all turned to Futurama to fill the void; Futurama has been cancelled three times now. When that dream shattered like a hot pot of coffee thrown at a child's face in frustration, we collectively turned to Family Guy. Now that show sucks so hard, they opened their latest season with a Simpsons crossover, which reminded us all why we stopped watching both shows.

You'll all have rolled your eyes fervently at your monitors by now, I'm sure; if I think televised programming has gone downhill, it's probably because I watch shitty cartoons instead of adult TV shows, like Game of Thrones, or Arrow. Except both of those shows have succeeded based solely on luck. GoT is based on a hundred-year-old New Jerseyites acid flashbacks and is a hit because they use nudity to cover up the fact that after four seasons, nothing has happened on that show. In that span of time, two kings have died, the Starks were nearly eliminated, the Lannisters have been torn apart, and... what was the overarching plot of all that shit again? Winter is coming, right? Is it gonna be here soon?



As for Arrow, I have no clue why people watch this. The title character is wholly uninteresting; hey, I'm DC's take on Hawkeye, nobody's favorite Avenger. Who wants to watch me fight crime alone, with no other heroes, for an hour once a week? I mean, would anybody pay to watch a ninety minute Green Arrow movie? Why would you watch twenty hours of a Green Arrow movie broken up into a shitty TV series? Plus, Arrow is getting a spinoff this fall, starring the Flash, which is asinine; they're separate characters, so how is this a spinoff? Because DC owns both properties? That's like saying Ridiculousness is a spinoff of Tosh.0. Plus, didn't the Flash already have a TV show? One that nobody liked? Well, I hope being darker and grittier makes up for how no one likes your character, because the CW has already decided you like it, so they bought more episodes.


Speaking of superhero shows, even more of them! Remember Constantine, that fuck-awful Keanu Reeves movie from 2005 with Shia LeBouf as the lovable teen sidekick? That's a TV show now, because... ? Also, neither Keanu nor Shia will reprise their roles. Wanna know something really interesting, though? Hellblazer, the comic upon which the movie and its spinoff (why is The Flash called a spinoff of Arrow while this show is being called "a new original series"?) is actually really fucking cool. Just look at that name: HELLBLAZER. If Microsoft named their five hundred dollar NSA spying device the HELLBLAZER, Sony would be bankrupt by now.

Well what about the people that don't watch Thrones or any superhero based programs? Women, I mean. Well, females have always been subjected to pandering, idiotic programming full of such words as "reaffirming", "heartwarming", and my personal unfavorite, "touching". Touching what, exactly? My balls? I don't think that's the case, because if these shows touched my balls, I might actually like them.

Shows like Switched at Birth and The Fosters are white male propaganda aimed at young minority females. Seeing women of color rise to prominence in the early 2000s (I wish we called that era the zinths), the white man decided that colored females like Beyonce and Jessica Alba should lighten their hair and skin to become more attractive to white men; being a white girl was "cool", as it were. Once young colored girls were hooked, we started seeing TV shows starring semi-white women dealing with outlandish problems, often times reacting to them in an even more over the top way. These episodes usually culminated in the young female being affirmed or validated by the words of an older, wiser female. If the older female is of color, this counts as a treefolk moment; if not, it's racist bullshit. This message indoctrinates the viewer into thinking that following the example of an older white woman is the best option to take. But what did the last generation of white females give the world? There are two answers: Hilary Clinton and moms.

There's a reason 'different' is in a white font.

The white man has decided that being a young, possibly mixed-race female is acceptable on TV, but only if the example being set is to be just like your mom and marry a white dude. This tells our younger sisters and daughters that the only thing they could ever hope to accomplish is voting in a swing state. Unless of course, you're one hundred percent white, at which point your character must be a complete brat, constantly turning up her nose at the never ending stream of gifts flowing past her feet. She has failed to appreciate the gifts of the white man, and must therefore be made an example of.

I can't be the only person who realizes this shit, right? On Switched at Birth, the two lead females are comprised of one very light-skinned mixed race girl raised by rich whites and one deaf ginger raised by light-skinned Latinas. The mixed girl is very rebellious, insistent on expressing herself and constantly going against the wisdom of her elders, only to spend the end of every episode admitting she was wrong and apologizing to all the whites she upset. In other words, her Latin heritage manifests itself in dissent and chaos, however the white half inside her acknowledges that this is wrong, and makes her feel guilty for succumbing to these primal urges. Her deaf "sister", however, is a standout student in her inner city high school, rising head and shoulders above her classmates. This is supposed to be inspirational because she's deaf, but it's really racist, because she's white. Being deaf isn't her actual handicap, because it's something she has long since overcome. Her handicap for the duration of the show is her Latin family, and the courage she displays overcoming that fact that she can't get the educational opportunities and money that she whitefully deserves.

I can't give you any preferential treatment, even though I really want to.

The Fosters is an even worse show. It's about two lesbos (nice), one white and one mixed race (iseewutyoodidther) who raise a squadron of foster children. Get it? The Fosters? Foster kids? You don't get it, do you? Anyway, the muff divers offer these kids tough love with an open-minded, liberal spin. Because dykes can't vote Republican, that would just be crazy. Plus, even though these two women run the household, the white woman's ex-husband can show up any time he wants and stay for as long as he wants, doing whatever he wants. The message here is that lesbian marriage is only acceptable with oversight and permission from a white man. It may also be that lesbianism is only a sure thing if you've tried at least one dick. Hell, there was even one episode where the ex-husband showed up simply to ground his son for doing something he didn't approve of while in the care of these lesbians. The father wasn't there when the events transpired, he had no clue of the context, and the lesbians had already explained to the child that what he did was okay. But fuck all that shit, because the white man wants it his way. What's worse, the white lesbian takes time to explain to her biracial boob-squeezer that what her husband said was right, and that their parenting was flawed in this situation. Again, being a lesbian is totally okay so long as you obey the white man at every opportunity. Of course, later on that season, the son has sex with his father's girlfriend and the lesbians don't get mad at him for that either, so maybe Whitey has a point on this one.


TV sucks. Want to know what's better than watching an entire season of Gotham? Watching one of the Nolan Batmen. Just pick any of 'em, all three are better than watching young Bruce Wayne brooding for twenty episodes. There's a reason nobody puts that shit in any of the movies; no one wants to see it. However, there is also a reason why DC will never allow Batman to suit up and fight the Joker in a TV show. To see that shit, you'll have to watch Gotham: the Movie. Or just read the source material, whichever. Call me when China, IL gets a third season.

You should all be watching this.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You suck, GoT rules.