A Golden Age of TV
It’s like Peggy Noonan was reading the League!
I feel gratitude to the largely unheralded network executives and producers who gave it to us. The first golden age can be summed up with one name: “Playhouse 90.” It was the 1950s and ’60, when TV was busy being born. The second can be summed up with the words “The Sopranos,” “Mad Men,” “The Wire,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “ER,” “24,” “The West Wing,” “Law and Order,” “30 Rock.” These are classics. Some nonstars at a network made them possible. Good for them.
I’ll be honest, I think the last decade of TV absolutely crushes the 50s and the 60s. I don’t think it’s even all that close. The ascendancy of HBO and the way that it forced regular cable networks like FX to step up their game has ushered in a wonderful, wonderful time for TV-lovers. I’ll take “The Shield” and “Deadwood” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” over anything from decades prior.
Leaving that aside for a moment, I’d like to briefly touch on something she mentions:
I leave it to others to dilate on why TV now is so good and movies so bad, since both come from the same town, Hollywood, in the same era.
I question whether movies are “so bad” right now — some very good to great movies have been made in the last decade — but I think she’s right that TV is getting the better of it. This has happened, I think, because television has finally embraced its medium fully. Look at a show like “The Wire,” each season of which was essentially a 13-hour movie. That’s not quite right, but hopefully you see what I’m getting at…with 13 hours to play with, creators have far more time to carve out space for their characters and explore deeper themes. They can build up mysteries over the span of a decade (“Lost”) or carefully examine the soul-killing effects of corruption and living a life of lies (“The Shield”)* or examine the post-9/11 world through a sci-fi lens (“Battlestar Galactica”). To say nothing of “Mad Men.”
Anyway, we’re in THE golden age of television. Is there anyway to go back and strip that designation from past ages? Screw the 50s; live in the now.
*Seriously: The final scene in the final episode of the “The Shield” still gives me chills. Vic Mackey’s self-destruction over that seven season run was the single greatest character arc in the history of television. Better than Tony Soprano, by far.