I
was talking to a friend of mine about a recent episode
of “This Is Us,” a show I’ve written about substantially
in the past. She was telling me how she’s dreading the
moment when the show goes off the cliff. It’s a general fear
about the show not being able to maintain its quality over its
run. My response, though, was why not trust the show to be
good and enjoy it while it’s at its peak? Every TV show fades
at least a little before it ends, but there are too many strong
moments in great shows to not celebrate them.
The problem with this view is I sometimes end up spurned
by TV that lost its quality over its run. Last summer, thinking
about this phenomenon, I wrote about “Scandal.” At its best,
the series ran like a runaway freight train, moving through
story and plot twists at a breakneck pace. But this season,
it seemed to run out of momentum and doubled down on
boring stories and ideas that stopped surprising me. There
were fleeting moments, but I kept wishing for more from it
and for it to show me why I liked it in the first place.
That failure on the part of “Scandal” left a bitter taste in
my mouth, but there were times when skepticism almost got
the better of me in my viewing. My favorite show on the air
right now is “Jane the Virgin.” If you read the logline at face
value — “a virgin is accidentally artificially inseminated by
another man’s sperm” — it sounds completely ridiculous.
But I gave the show a chance, and I am so grateful I did. It’s
one of the kindest, warmest and funniest shows on network
TV right now, but if I had maintained my skepticism, I
would never have stuck with it.
I think this sense of taking a chance on TV comes from an
inherent sense of optimism from which I look at the world.
I’ve always looked at situations with a sense of “why this
will be good” rather than “how this can and will go wrong.”
That’s just a part of who I am as a person, and, in this case, it
extends to how I watch my TV.
To go back to “This Is Us” though, I can see why someone
would be doubtful about its ability to continue on its path. It
has a very high degree of difficulty for what it wants to do.
But, for now, watching Sterling K. Brown, who’s so good in
his role, and the family dynamics are enough for me to very
much enjoy what I’m seeing.
At this point, I’ve reviewed dozens of shows and watched
dozens of others. However, I don’t approach TV with the
skepticism of a veteran TV watcher. I still try to give every
new show a chance to prove itself before I write it off.
Whether it’s a serialized drama or the most basic sitcom,
there’s always the chance it will go off the rails, but why not
try to give it a shot? Maybe I’m inherently optimistic, but
there’s still every reason to enjoy something I like, without
having to worry about when the experience will go bad.
2B
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the statement
Wednesday, November 9, 2016 / The Statement
TV and Me: Indelible Optimism
B Y A L E X I N T N E R
the
tangent
EMILIE FARRUGIA/Daily
T H O U G H T B U B B L E : AC TIVISM
“The most important thing to me is women’s
rights, our basic rights about our body, our right to
vote, I don’t want to go back 50 years, we should
have equal rights with men and with everyone.”
– School of Music, Theatre and Dance sophomore
Sydney Sheperd
ILLUSTRATION BY ELISE HAADSMA