Goodnight Seattle
I had fallen out of the habit of watching Frasier during its last four or five seasons - thinking back, I can't even remember why. There are many TV shows that I have watched religiously and then stopped watching because of a perceived drop in quality, but that was never the case with Frasier. Considering it had an eleven year run, it is amazing that it stayed so consistently sharp and well-written.
I had missed so much of the series that I didn't feel comfortable watching the last ever episode until I had brought myself up to speed - thus began an aggressive campaign of downloading old episodes until I had worked my way through all eleven seasons.
I think that saddest thing about Frasier was that it always ran second fiddle to lesser sitcoms like Friends. I mean, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed Friends too... but it was never even in the same league as Frasier as far as the writing, the acting, or the producing were concerned.
A lot of great TV shows have gone off the air (or have become shadows of their former selves). It's really depressing to think that there are only a handful of shows worth watching these days. Buffy is gone. Angel is gone. Frasier is gone. The X-Files are gone. Firefly is gone (and indeed, never really got a chance in the first place). Futurama is gone. Dark Angel is gone. The Simpsons jumped the shark about six years ago... and the few episodes I watched of season five of the West Wing (a show that I once regarded as the being the best that has ever been on television) were just heart-breakingly bad.
What's left? Of the TV shows that I watch, only Alias and Scrubs. There's nothing else left on TV for me to become engrossed with. It's all reality TV - Big Brother, Survivor and 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here'. Television is just converging towards the same mediocre crap. The same tired premises. The same talentless mediocrities swarming over the screen in an undignified scrabble for their fifteen minutes of fame.
The last episode of Frasier didn't just mark the end of an era. It was just one in a long line of nails being hammered into the coffin of quality entertainment.
I had missed so much of the series that I didn't feel comfortable watching the last ever episode until I had brought myself up to speed - thus began an aggressive campaign of downloading old episodes until I had worked my way through all eleven seasons.
I think that saddest thing about Frasier was that it always ran second fiddle to lesser sitcoms like Friends. I mean, don't get me wrong - I enjoyed Friends too... but it was never even in the same league as Frasier as far as the writing, the acting, or the producing were concerned.
A lot of great TV shows have gone off the air (or have become shadows of their former selves). It's really depressing to think that there are only a handful of shows worth watching these days. Buffy is gone. Angel is gone. Frasier is gone. The X-Files are gone. Firefly is gone (and indeed, never really got a chance in the first place). Futurama is gone. Dark Angel is gone. The Simpsons jumped the shark about six years ago... and the few episodes I watched of season five of the West Wing (a show that I once regarded as the being the best that has ever been on television) were just heart-breakingly bad.
What's left? Of the TV shows that I watch, only Alias and Scrubs. There's nothing else left on TV for me to become engrossed with. It's all reality TV - Big Brother, Survivor and 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here'. Television is just converging towards the same mediocre crap. The same tired premises. The same talentless mediocrities swarming over the screen in an undignified scrabble for their fifteen minutes of fame.
The last episode of Frasier didn't just mark the end of an era. It was just one in a long line of nails being hammered into the coffin of quality entertainment.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home