Uncooperative Crickets

Here's the thing about The West Wing: it's about very intelligent people who genuinely care about things that don't directly affect their lives. Isn't that a great idea? I haven't seen a lot of shows like that. Scrubs, to some degree. However, Scrubs requires two extreme characters to drive the point home: JD, who is sensitive beyond belief, and Dr. Cox, who is such a huge jerk that his kindness looks extreme in the contrast. The West Wing has, in some sense, less cartoony characters. I haven't seen many other shows like that, although I think that MASH might be one. I suppose that ER might be one, too, although I kind of think that the plot mainly revolves around people trying to deal with their own lives.

I want to see more people trying to take care of each other. Heck, I might even try taking care of other people more often.

Of course, then you get into shows like Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and Arrested Development, and you see that it can be fun to laugh at people who are too self-absorbed. It is sometimes fun to poke fun at them.

Bad commercial of the day: a little girl, after hearing that 1 human year = 7 dog years, tells her mom that the mom is 230 years old. Then the mom informs an older woman, presumably the grandmother, that she is pushing 500. Now, this third-grader is remarkably good at fractions, since 230 isn't divisible by 7. Also, the mother is about 33 years old, while the grandmother is 71 years old. She didn't look 71...maybe 51.

I understand that there is a need for a "clean" number for comedy, but I don't want to deal with these things that lead to innumeracy. It's kind of like the Massachusetts State lottery advertising that is pays out $300 million per month (or whatever). It's a meaningless number, since it says nothing aobut how likely you are to win. And this is state sponsored.

I'm done.

posted by Dirk Awesome @ 10:23 PM