30 Rock Is Imploding In On Itself, And Says "Good Luck!"

I don't watch a lot of T.V., and now it seems that what little I do watch might become increasingly hard to follow, according to an article in yesterday's Pioneer Press. This article about the popular television shows of today, such as 30 Rock, Big Bang Theory, and Parks And Recreation, bemoans the growing trend of saturating T.V. content with cultural references and in-jokes about other T.V. shows. In other words, television programming is getting its inspiration from other television programming.

This invites a catch-twenty-two; television requires you to watch other television shows so that you can adequately enjoy your favorite television show - i.e. if you want to get all the jokes on 30 Rock, you might need to have a good understanding of the respective plot-lines of The Office, The Simpsons, LOST, and maybe even Tyler Perry's House Of Payne. That's a lot of T.V. watching, and I don't have that much time to devote to T.V.

The main question I think the Pion. Press is posing in all of this is 'are we making content with lasting value?' Will people ten or twenty years from now be able to watch an episode of 30 Rock and have any idea what is going on? Will they get the jokes?

Is our culture, perhaps, creating an unsustainable model of television in which the only way to understand any show is to have watched all of them? If that answer is yes, then I think the causal factors involved are pretty obvious: cultural entertainment glut and media over-saturation. It used to be that the entertainment media was on the outside of the world looking in. Fodder for their shows was real-world events, ideas, and trends. Now the trend has shifted, and commentary about whether or not the plane wreck survivors will even get off the island is just as valid as that about pirate activity off Madagascar. What's real is now on-par with what's entertainment, because the American media thinks that their audience is equally informed about both worlds.




_DZ