illumined horizon

I never intended to post about entertainment (TV, Movies, etc...) much when I started this blog. But probably one of the greatest things about the internet is the amount of surreal, and crazy stuff that's all over the world wide web. I've been google-ing around and looking at wikipedia for a number of old TV series and I'm finding it a lot of fun to read about some of them. Some neat ones I just looked at are Get a Life, The A-Team, Punky Brewster, and My So-Called Life. I've been thinking a bit recently about how especially television, but also to some extent movies have gotten very safe in present times. I mean if you think back to the premises of some older TV shows, how insane and unlikely they were was really key in what made them work as shows at all.

If you think about like Charles in Charge, Gimme a Break, Punky Brewster, Diff'rent Strokes, it's no wonder there are so few decent sitcoms on television today (look at Family Guy it's probably the funniest show on tv and pays homage to these type of older zany shows all the time). So I think the writers of television shows and film should really look back to yesteryear, and some of the unlikely scenarios and premises that made viewers suspend disbelief, kickback, and veg out with a particular program. This is probably why I've never gotten shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, or According to Jim; there's no dead parent, no adopted orphan, no African-American nanny; to start with there's nothing funny or at least unusual so it's that much harder for programs like this to peak my interest.