I'm responding to the recent ...
Question: I'm responding to the recent
Knight Rider-related
exchange, in which you said, "I've got nothing against harmless escapism, and I wouldn't argue with the person who commented on my Dispatch that not everything on TV should have to be
Masterpiece Theatre." I
would argue with that person — not by saying that everything
should be
Masterpiece Theatre, but by saying that it's a rhetorical sleight of hand, using the loaded term "
Masterpiece Theatre" to justify mediocrity (or, more precisely, to rationalize his or her own willingness to put up with it). Surely not all TV should be highbrow culture. I enjoy a good deal of middlebrow escapism: shows whose goal isn't to challenge viewers but to provide fast-paced, immediately emotionally gratifying, predictable and low-stress entertainment, often with fantasy or magical-realist elements (though many of these shows transcend escapism:
Chuck,
Psych,
Monk,
Gilmore Girls,
Reaper,
24,
My Name Is Earl,
Desperate Housewives,
Supernatural, even
Pushing Daisies). The rhetorical sleight of hand in saying "not everything has to be
Masterpiece Theater" is that it's really suggesting "not everything has to be high quality." That's just false. There's no reason we
oughtn't demand that everything be high quality. There's no reason we can't expect the writers, actors, directors, set designers and editors who produce middlebrow escapism to be good at their craft — and to call them on it when they aren't. I suspect you'd agree that that's a critic's role: not to hector people into favoring weightier, higher-culture genres over escapist ones (like a nutritionist urging them to eat whole grains instead of donuts), but to tell them which shows within each genre are well or poorly executed in the genre's terms (as well as when and how seemingly escapist shows bend or mix or wildly transcend their genres, like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Veronica
Mars — which is often when things get most exciting.... though that's another e-mail).
Answer: Dude! Great essay. I hope Keith forgives the extensive editing I did on this one, but the essential point here is that, critically speaking, I should have been able to like and recommend something like
Knight Rider had it aspired to something more than crassly commercial junk food, which it most certainly did not. I shudder at the patronizing term "middlebrow," because it suggests there's something "lesser" in merely being entertained, and that a
24,
Gilmore Girls or
Pushing Daisies could never be considered masterpieces (which at their best I think they are). But I totally agree that I see my role as a critic not as an elitist who urges people only to eat their PBS vegetables — although at times, they are quite yummy as well as nourishing — or as a pay-cable snob who shuns all commercial TV or comedies with laugh tracks, but as someone who can navigate all genres from serious drama to traditional comedy to fluffy reality and point out the good and the bad, the pretentious and the ridiculous, and the beautiful and ugly in all.
