"croissant-munching, latte-sipping": instances of misconceived media-class self-loathing ITT

"MID IS NOT the mediocre TV of the past. It’s more upscale. It is the aesthetic equivalent of an Airbnb “modern farmhouse” renovation, or the identical hipster cafe found in medium-sized cities all over the planet. It’s nice! The furniture is tasteful, they’re playing Khruangbin on the speakers, the shade-grown coffee is an improvement on the steaming mug of motor oil you’d have settled for a few decades ago.

If comparing TV to fast-casual dining is an insulting analogy, in my defense I only borrowed it. A New Yorker profile last year quoted a Netflix executive describing the platform’s ideal show as a “gourmet cheeseburger.”

I’m not going to lie, I enjoy a gourmet cheeseburger. Caramelize some onions, lay on a slice of artisanal American cheese and I’m happy. But at heart, the sales pitch for that cheeseburger is no different from that for a Big Mac: You know what you’re going to get."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/27/arts/television/mid-tv.html

i didn't actually know where to put that. but i had to put it somewhere.

Is “artisanal American cheese” an oxymoron?

Oh the actual article has a link for that phrase. I didn’t click. It didn’t seem exciting enough…

can you even corn syrup in cheese

https://media1.tenor.com/m/FjRhkdAaI48AAAAC/art-is.gif

that whole damn article should have been one sentence: Art is anal cheese. boom. you're done. everything you need to know about television.

can you even corn syrup in cheese

it's called Velveeta you philistine

Good article

so the article is saying that the underlying motivation for both Five Guys AND Ted Lasso being capitalism results in both products having the same satiating-but-unsatisfying affect?

makes sense. you're selling a brand, right? the taste is secondary. starbucks very definitely doesn't make the best coffee. doesn't matter. i watched 4 episodes of SEAL Team the other day. there were very few suprises. other than that John Dahl directed one of the episodes. not that you would have known that an honest to gosh movie director had made it. SEAL Team not that far off in quality from David Mamet's SEAL team show. Popeyes definitely an improvement over Wendys though. and more satisfying. maybe even a cut above MID as far as fried chicken goes.

i disagree with that article though. i'd rather have smoothly entertaining programming than bad cable t.v. programming. i would rather watch 4 hours of Suits than 4 hours of horrible reality t.v./old Wipeout episodes/killer nanny exposes. i watch FBI while cleaning records at night sometimes. even though Jeremy Sisto is in it and he in a constant reminder of how much i hated him and his sister on PRESTIGE television show Six Feet Under.

"IS a constant reminder"

enough time as gone by. Jeremy Sisto isn't that horrible character anymore. we have moved on. i mostly watch it for the moments when Sela Ward gets all serious like a teacher i have a crush on...and if that's MID than brother i don't want to be PRESTIGE.

The article seems to omit basic foundational critique of television … idk what this person studied in college… but the structure of television (modeled on radio) is to be ongoing… to be something you can fold laundry to because it’s a constant companion… the streaming technology has actually changed to “go back to the roots” as it just goes to the next episode seamlessly (it used to stop iirc … ?)

There's no possible system of tv production that's going to consistently make The Sopranos or The Wire. Those are exceptional shows. The fact that most things are mediocre is definitional. The question to me is whether the current system even allows an occasional Sopranos or Wire to emerge, and I'm concerned it doesn't, although I'm not sure why. I wonder if it's a bit like what I've heard described as the problem with SNL, i.e. it used to be *the* place to go for a comedy writer, but by the 2010s there were way too many other places to go and the talent was dispersed. Maybe there are too many "mid" shows for there to be a handful of truly great shows.

According to my brother, who is sort of in "the industry" -- there's also just a pretty bad atmosphere for talent/quality now even though the strike is over. Lots of sitting on cash, pulling shows, shelving stuff after it's been made. Pullback after a glut, perhaps, awaiting consolidation, hoping AI will work some magic that it probably won't. I don't totally understand it. But I do suspect that there will be consolidation among streaming platforms and a reduction in the number of things made.

I think for a while the thing was that prestige TV became such a concept that a lot of stuff that was as trashy and low quality as anything from the old cable days would also get a prestige sheen just by virtue of being a streaming show or hourlong drama. I don't know that that's still the case though.

at some point cable television just became a nightmare. in the 90s it was actually kinda fun in a wild west sorta way. i have VHS tapes where i just channel-surfed thru the weirdest terrain of local public/christian/weird movies/music videos/bizzare infomercials/etc. people would try all kinds of things to get cable eyeballs. and networks weren't immune to it. the morning/afternoon blocks especially were just mayhem. soaps and shouting. i get live t.v. for my dad via Hulu and other than the news or sports its all a faux-streaming deadzone. just space-filler until prime-time or the news or some awards show or sports thing. its no fun at all to watch 4 hours of reality game wardens with tons of commercials. streaming is a godsend. even with some commercials. Tubi is the wild west now but someone will tame it eventually. all those weird Roku movie channels i get. they're just nuts as far as content.
i just feel: why complain about content being less-than-the-sopranos when everything lives forever. you'll never see all the good stuff that already exists if you are really into t.v.-watching let alone all the MID stuff. also people don't need to get too nostalgic about old bad shows. most of them were truly bad. even as novelties you don't need to watch most of it. i honestly have no idea how they are making so much stuff now. its a LOT of hours. did i read some article where they are actually running out of actors in some place like Sweden because they have to make so many crime shows for Acorn and Britbox and Netflix? maybe it wasn't Sweden.

my MID ideal now is Paramount+. the ease of it. some decent movies and shows via Showtime and tons of seasons of mindlessness. was that me starting CSI:New York Episode 1 Season 1 last night? It might have been...

I think part of what led to the glut and what is crashing now how to do that streaming services are all considered tech platforms, not broadcast networks, and the funding models for tech platforms just got ya led out because the free money era is currently receding because of interest rate hikes.

it still feels like a glut to me. but maybe that will change over time. so many shows. netflix stealing from the entire world of t.v. must mean that it will continue with 20+ new shows a week or whatever. of which 2 are really good. but even my lowly PBS app channel has way more than i can watch. and they add stuff all the time.

it is a bit strange to me that we're using this very specific and useful thread to talk about TV but since scott got told off for posting movie stuff on the streaming thread (where this discussion surely belongs) I get it

feel like i hijacked Mark's media-class self-loathing thread though. should probably take it the streaming thread.

it just felt like a really conflicted article to me. *where is the great stuff? but i fold my laundry too don't get me wrong...but the bad stuff was really bad and that was better? and i like hamburgers but they are STILL hamburgers...*

the one thing i did feel was when they talked about the smoothing/AI feel to shows to make them seem slicker/fancier. but that just seems smart to me. more people will watch a shiny thing so why not make it shiny? it also reminds me that i keep forgetting to turn off the smoothing on my dad's t.v. but he doesn't care so i don't care.

x-post!

i think we're done here anyway. haha!

i just feel: why complain about content being less-than-the-sopranos when everything lives forever. you'll never see all the good stuff that already exists if you are really into t.v.-watching let alone all the MID stuff

I don't agree with this. I'll probably never watch every great noir movie and every japanese cinema masterpiece, but I don't want to spend my life just watching near 75-100 year old stuff, I'd like there to be great art that actually reflects the time I live in.

actually, this would have made more sense. though MID is somewhat different from middlebrow i guess.

Middlebrow

"I'd like there to be great art that actually reflects the time I live in."

i just mean that there is no hurry now. or sell-by date. i get mubi and ovid and criterion and there is more great stuff from the last 5 or 10 years on there then i can get to. if there is a lean film or t.v. year there is certainly enough backlog for someone. with network and cable t.v. being kinda superfluous now you can find good things anywhere/anytime. that's all i meant.