Product or Perspective: The Reason for a Disappointing Season

I realized something last night as I reread my review of both Traffic Light and Mad Love. I have been rather disappointed by this season's new shows pretty much across the board. With the exception of FOX's Lonestar and Raising Hope, nothing has really "wowed" me this year, and Lonestar managed to get itself cancelled before it's third episode (more on that in my October post entitled "Cancellation"). Even with the new round of midseason pick ups, only USA's Fairly Legal managed to impress me even a little bit. My opinion of this year's shows is just lackluster at best.

I didn't used to be this way. I think it's safe to say that if Greek premiered a month ago, I would have stopped watching after only a couple of episodes, but since I started watching it years ago, it is a guilty pleasure I can't get enough of (and I am terribly disappointed that the series finale is only a couple of weeks away). So what has brought about this change towards the cynical?

Is it that I have begun to actively critique, in writing, what makes a show good or bad in my mind's eye? By doing so, I force myself to watch the shows more critically than I would if I were just sitting down for a quiet evening of viewing. Has this taken away from my ability to enjoy a television program? On the contrary. I think, if anything, it has heightened my enjoyment. Part of what makes me love White Collar so much is my active involvement, not only in the story and characters, but in analyzing them and the writers. So there has to be more to it than that.

Is it, perhaps, just the change of time? As I get older and more mature, have I just lost patience with television? Well that's probably partly true. I have grown impatient with sloppy stories and careless character developments, yes. But I have also grown more patient in terms of waiting for stories and characters to flush themselves out. I no longer need the instant gratification that I got from Blue's Clues or Full House, where everything was instantly established and relatively self contained. Now I have more patience to wait for the relationship in Castle or the seasonal arc in White Collar to come to fruition. So that can't be the entirety of the reason.

Is it possible then, that this season has just seen a dip in network standards? As networks race to replace shows with ratings deemed unacceptably low because of an increasingly uncounted group of fans watching from the internet, do they more readily accept lesser quality shows in hopes of capturing our attention by the force of numbers? As easy as it would be to vilify and blame the Nielsen ratings system this way, it probably wouldn't be fair. After all, last year had it's ups and downs too. The year of Community and White Collar also gave us Glee and Vampire Diaries.

So where then, does my soured opinion come from? Well it's probably something I already mentioned, albeit indirectly. The sheer volume of shows. As a college student, I rarely had time for TV, and so I picked and chose which shows to watch, and only watched the ones I judged (in advance or through word of mouth a few episodes in) to be worth my time. Now, working part time and hunting for steadier employment, I've had a lot more free time to watch television, and this blog has provided me with an excuse to watch everything, even the bad. Without that initial filter in place, I'll occasionally find a good show I wouldn't otherwise have seen, but far more often, I'll catch myself watching a show that I normally wouldn't tune into in the first place.