Everywhere I went this week, I was inundated with recaps of the ever-popular Prison Break, and its recent return to the tube. The more I heard these spontaneous appraisals, ranging of course, from the ‘brilliance’ of setting a show in the confines of a prison, to the serene oceanic quality of Wentworth Miller’s eyes, the more I found myself distanced from the jail that millions of fans are serving their Monday-night time in. Yes, Prison Break is a good show and I’m sure the average TV fan will find it unbelievably captivating. I’d love to surf into Wenty’s eyes just like the other million and one girls (and guys) that tune in every week, and if I could just have him brood for me…well then, my life would be over. Despite all of this, there is one thing that has kept me from aiding and abetting the success of the show.
I am, like I imagine a fraction of you, a TV snob. This quality was first pointed out to me when I rolled my eyes at an individual who said that Smallville was the best hour of programming they’d ever seen. It was further enforced when I found myself indulging in a case of TV-ism, judging an individual’s character based on their TV-watching palette. The next step was tuning into the show recently, and spending the hour thoroughly entertained–not because of its undeniable’ brilliance’, but rather the opposite, which resulted in endless bouts of laughter. I’ve even reduced the amount of time I spend talking to this Superman-loving fiend, because his lack of better taste irritates me. His reduction to Wentworth-eye-fan proportions, only for the eternally cardboard (but pretty, don’t forget that) Kristin Kreuk sickens me.
Much of this snobbery comes from having watched shows that came before the Smallvilles and Prison Breaks.. Though the shows remain rating successes, smaller, more critically acclaimed programming like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Oz are reflections of more under-the-radar storytelling successes that have quietly inspired the mainstream rating-gatherers of prime-time today. People continually scoff when I tell them that Wentworth started on Buffy, playing a high school swimmer turned fish-dude in the second season. The great Harold Perrineau Jr. was spellbinding as Augustus Hill on Oz, way before he was beached on Lost Island.
These are all wonderful actors currently spending time on more than mediocre shows, but I wonder what it will take to get people to open their eyes to the smaller rippling programming that will undeniably cause big splashes in the prime-time of the future. Perhaps, however, this is their beauty, the silent soldiers that will continue to give for the sake of our popular TV picks.
So go ahead, call me a snob or scoff all you want. The truth is, some of us loved them first.
