Lust-See TV

What happens when Bob Thompson, a writer who grew up in a house without a television and lives a TV-free life to this day, decides to find out what he's been missing, with his namesake the Professor of Television as Virgil to his Dante?

[...] all in all, I was having a pretty good time. So I decided to keep going and watch "Friends," which was the very first show my girls mentioned when I asked what TV their sixth- and seventh-grade pals talked about.

It turned out to be about a dorky college professor having an affair with a beautiful young student, ho ho ho, who groped him in his office, hee hee hee, and then bought herself a teeny-weeny bikini for spring break, heh heh heh, which made the dorky professor jealous, especially after one of his gal pals informed him that "spring break is doing frat guys," hah hah hah ...

Aiee! I didn't run screaming from the room, but the impulse was there.

In fairness, Thompson also had a lot of more positive experiences as he encountered everything from The Sopranos to The Bachelor.

As you'd expect of an article from the Washington Post there's a considerable emphasis on American TV history, but the meat of the article is Thompson's reactions to the shows and his thoughts on whether TV qualifies as art. Well worth a read.

[Via PopPolitics]

Posted by John at January 31, 2003 10:48 PM