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hw's avatar

Have we, as a society, lost the ability to recognize or demand 'better', having adapted to a steady diet of mediocrity? Or are we self-soothing our collective PTSD caused by the horrors of the world and are grateful simply for a distraction, irrespective of quality?

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Wade's avatar

Loved this.

I'm struck sometimes by this phenomenon where I go read episode recaps of shows I might want to watch on places like Vulture and AVClub, where I used to be a regular in the Actual Golden Age of TV That Is Now Over, and it seems like every show gets reviewed by some new guest editor who gives everything, at minimum, a B-, and usually higher. And then I read the review and it's all about what characters everyone loves, and what characters everyone hates, and if the right things happened to each, where with the best Golden Age shows they used to be about Themes.

I used to think that was about the reviewers, but now I think it's about culture. We still like our shows to be a stream of hot goss as much as we did when SatC was running, it's just now we need to be able to pretend otherwise.

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