In your Jan. 9 posting, ...
Question: In your Jan. 9
posting, Christine asked why roughly five million people who watch
Desperate Housewives do not watch
Grey's Anatomy. You presented one logical explanation, that some people do not watch past 10 pm/ET due to work the next day. Then you seem perplexed by the rest of us who like to stay with
Housewives but not with
Grey's Anatomy. To start out with, I would consider myself a connoisseur of television. I say this so that you won't consider me a simple dolt who just watches action and procedural shows. I love good writing, chemistry between the actors, intelligent interactions, interesting background. But to me, it's simple. I do not like shows with a straight-out "soap opera" formula (their main focus is how many people they can get their characters involved with in varying situations) like
ER,
Grey's Anatomy,
Beverly Hills, 90210 and
Gilmore Girls, etc. I admit that I watched the first few shows of
Anatomy,
ER and
L.A. Law but soon grew bored by the soap-opera story lines. I sometimes even revisit soap-type shows because I want to see if the writing and character chemistry have sustained. But it is just not my cup of tea. I am a male who watches
Desperate Housewives because of the attractive women and the crazy story lines. I consider
Housewives a fun satire of the soap-opera model. I perceive (perhaps wrongly) that people involved in
Grey's Anatomy, etc., take themselves too seriously. There are many males whom I know do not admit to watching
Housewives but watch it because of
Eva,
Nicollette,
Teri,
Marcia and
Felicity. I bet about at least half of the drop is due to people like me who are still awake and watch their recordings of missed shows like
Veronica Mars,
Numbers,
Medium,
CSI,
Arrested Development,
Smallville or
Everybody Hates Chris.
Answer: What a fruitful topic this turned out to be. There seem to be as many explanations for
Housewives-to-
Grey's tune-out as there are people. Everything from the late time period, to having fallen behind and not wanting to join the show midstream, to not liking medical shows, to using the time period to catch up on other shows, to instances (like the above) of simple viewer preference. This letter no doubt ruffled a ton of feathers with its generalized disdain for what is termed "soap opera," so let me point out that within any genre, there is room for good and bad, formula hackwork and great innovation. Happens in procedural crime dramas, happens in soaps, too. While I agree that
Housewives works best as a parody of the genre, I would strongly disagree that
Grey's Anatomy takes itself more seriously, although there are many serious moments. When both shows are on their game, both are delightful. Of course that also applies to a show like
Gilmore Girls, which defies any pigeonholing: comedy, drama, soap. It's all of those and none of those. Just because a show has continuing story lines involving romantic entanglements is no reason to shun it. Unless, of course, that's your choice.
