Pre-chewed T.V.

This concerned member of the audience would very much like to know what the hell's going on. Also, he doesn't remember anything that happened yesterday.
pic by: Duchamp

So this is an interesting side effect of the writers' strike:

I'm watching Lost. Well, I suppose that's an interesting side-effect too, but the one I'm talking about is the crap at the bottom of the screen.

ABC is providing Cliff's notes for T.V. - probably because they figure it's been such a long time since we last saw this episode that we've forgotten a) what's going on and b) how to parse basic T.V.

In college I felt Cliff's notes were less a disservice to professors and more to those who used them. I avoided them because I felt that, you know, the point is not to get the right answer on the test, but to learn how to parse a narrative for its themes.

Call me pointy-headed, but I cling to the hope that a story can be more than either a delicious vector for otherwise insulting commercials or even a convenient space of time during which you may stare slack-jawed into the middle distance.

Now I've known people (generally not liberal arts majors) who won't allow me to watch T.V. with them. It's partially because I'm processing the meta-data of a show (like the foreshadowing, the thematic tone, which members of the away-team are wearing red shirts, which guest actors are known stars, etc.) and partially because I'm a dick. I can tell you within a fairly short amount of time which "suspect" on CSI did it, and I will (It's the person the bug-guy picks or the person who at any time went to an adult book store for any reason other than to expostulate on how sad an adult book store is).

However, even those folks who think I'm a dick because I'll watch the first 10 minutes of Law and Order before surmising what's up can look at a scene on T.V. and work out which of the dozen T.V. tropes is being executed. Is that Hobbit on Lost closing himself in an airlock as the music swells and the slow-mo kicks in? I guess, as if his hell-for-leather emoting isn't giving it away, that he's sacrificing himself for someone. If I'd missed that though, there's now a little snarky bit of text at the bottom to tell me.

Chee-rist! Seriously?

What's going on here? Does the network think I'm a complete fucking git? I resent that. Do the writers think their work here on T.V. is so subtle I'm likely to miss the meaning of it? Get over yourselves. Shakespeare didn't footnote his own plays you jackasses (by the way, it's a pun on phallus if you're wondering); where do you get off?

Did I seriously write a whole post about how T.V. may not be a smart medium? Actually no. I wrote a post about the end of days. If we're getting to the point in our culture's decline that someone's decided most of our country can't process T.V. shows unassisted, we've become the Eloi.

ZING! DANIEL JUST LIT INTO ABC. HIS POINT IS THAT DESPITE CATERING TO THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR, ABC STILL THINKS IT'S SHOOTING OVER THE HEADS OF A SIGNIFICANT PROPORTION OF ITS VIEWERS (See. Insulting isn't it?)