Gotten bored with American Television
 

I feel that American TV shows, try too hard to be realistic, and this makes them boring. They take themselves way too seriously (of course note ALL shows), and this is the reason why I watch almost only Asian shows.

Does anyone here share my sentiments?

I do, somewhat... but I'm also wary of the "Grass Is Greener" complex.

I don't have any idea what you are talking about. Can you explain more clearly?

Don't know about realism or not but.....

As for me, I have a bigger problem with shows that try to build emphasis on immorality as a way of building an audience. It says something about the general population since many of these shows are still in business. What America finds entertaining and what Japan finds entertaining are very different IMO. Proportional-ly there are many more shows in American TV that resemble the dislocated equiv-icacy of our moral compass as a nation and people. Tv Production Companies thrive on this which simply domino-effects the entire industry into copying each other.

Something tells me we're not gonna agree on this. My point is that I feel American TV shows try too hard to be realistic, whereas Asian TV shows put let emphasis on reality and more on being entertaining.

Like I said, I am not sure what you mean. Maybe if you could come up with some examples.


I guess I am going to have to ask you to show some examples of this too. Lead characters with questionable morality populate stories all over the world. It is how the story is presented and rolls out that makes more of a statement about society (if you really want to go so far and make that stretch).

mmm, I kind of see what their getting at. A lot of popular American dramas like CSI and so on tend to home in on the gritty 'everything is going to the dogs' factor. You get it in the UK too; a drama now can't be really dramatic without someone shooting up, someone else going through a nasty divorce and someone having some other sort of crisis all in the same week, and with all the details dissected for the viewer. They take on this stance of 'tackling your real-life problems through the medium of television' sort of thing, as though an entertaining show HAS to have that kind of purpose. It's depressing.

Then there's car-crash TV. The ones like dating in the dark where they deliberately set up people who will behave atrociously with one another and then slag each other off. Crass telly. So it's kind of like being stuck in a rock and a hard place with TV sometimes. You get the old-people quiz shows and feature shows (antiques roadshow, mastermind etc mostly yawn yawn),
then crap like Big brother,
then a police drama with an exploded corpse on close up.
ha-de-ha sitcoms. Which are only funny to the canned audience
Or a soap where everyone hates everyone else and is miserable
or, god help us all, kid's telly like Hannah Montana, which is all so acidic-ally, forcefully cheerful I want to claw my own skin off.

Although I'd disagree in saying asian TV doesn't have all of this as well, it seems to be easier to find fairly innocent, gentile drama programs aimed at adults that are still entertaining. Sometimes I want something a bit grown-up that's outside of the misery-guts, sex and violence circus.

Still, having said that, I'd say some of the BBC dramas are much better than anything asian I've seen.

But that wasn't the complaint. Sitron said that American TV shows are too realistic, and therefore boring. I am trying to understand this argument.

The nice thing about TV in America is all those things exist, and I can spend hundreds of hours a day watching anything but them (including some fantastic BBC shows like Top Gear).

Well, I personally find reality TV brain-numbing guff, so if that's what he means, I totally agree.

Not sure what you mean there either. You mean the sheer variety of programming on American TV means you can avoid all the things you dislike?

:) Top Gear isn't half bad.

by the way...there isnt a thing like too realistic - either something is realistic or more/less/totally/a bit unrealistic. there is no such thing as "too much reality"

well shows like CSI, The Shield and so on are fine....if you are complaining about some kind of "realism" in anything then it should be those god damn extreme makover, the bachelour and the rest of the 5 bilion shows...i can't express how much i hate those things. or people who watch them and get teary eyed every single time - cant really decide.

EDIT: top gear is awesome. if british comedy is what you are after then i suggest The IT Crowd.