Turn on and tune in to avoid dropping out

How do you tell when a movie or TV show is any good? That’s an important question, although the answer is very subjective. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure (see the success of Jersey Shore).

Let me tell you how I go about answering the question of quality. The first thing that I try to discern is whether what I’m watching is a movie or a film, tv or TV. Those terms may seem synonymous (or just a matter of capitalization), and for most people they are. I use them to make a distinction about what the work is trying to do. A movie and tv are primarily intended to entertain; a film and TV try to illuminate some facet of the human condition. Movies and tv are lowbrow; the others are highbrow. Film and TV are literature; the others are just stories.

Does that mean that one is all bad and the other is all good? Well, there are times you need a snack and times you need a meal. At the end of a long week, I don’t want to sit down and watch Schindler’s List. On the other hand, a steady diet of nothing but How I Met Your Mother is no better than a steady diet of candy with no fruits or vegetables. (Although such a diet would be legen – wait for it – dary.) Watching too many movies and tv shows leaves you intellectually stunted while too many films and TV shows make you pretentious.

Knowing the filmmakers’ aims is important for setting expectations and gauging the amount of effort you'll have to put into your viewing. For example, the final few episodes of the sitcom Mad about You got very serious as the couple that had engaged in several seasons of lighthearted banter and kooky adventures suddenly began to grow emotionally apart and contemplate having extramarital affairs. This was not the entertainment my new wife and I tuned in to watch.  We wanted tv and got TV.

But sometimes having chocolate in the peanut butter (peanut butter in the chocolate?) is a good thing. I went into The Dark Knight wanting a movie about a guy with a utility belt who fights crime in the dark, and what I got was that AND a thoughtful movie about the nature of truth and morality. The film gave me everything I expected and more.

All of this is just to say that before you judge a work on the big or small screen, I would encourage you to take a moment to align your mindset with the filmmakers’ intention. This will prevent you snobs from delivering a kneejerk dismissal of Friends with Benefits and you slobs from trashing An Education before you see it. If you’ve done your best to see the film in the right frame of mind and you still don’t like it, by all means say so, but at that point you’ll have better reasoning behind your review.

Next up: The Louie episode I promised in my last post; I just needed to get this discussion out of the way first. Oh, by the way, I think this episode would be RATED R if it were in the theatres because of the opening scene before the credits. Louie is filled with profanity and R rated discussions of sex; however, this episode really stuck under my skin, and I want to explore why.