10 TV Shows You Have to Watch to Understand the World

I guess in a spectacular, autonomous-moving-of-the-non-living kind of way. Oh, all right, there's Rocky and Bullwinkle, and the Twilight Zone, and Monday Night Football, but I can't see how Baywatch, no was it Melrose, had anything to do with our dominant paradigms. Dallas was just too banal, it's like Almodovar or Fassbinder rolling in their little perversions which are just the same as my little perversions, maybe on a slightly larger scale, but I didn't need JR to tell me what naked ambition was when I grew up with Boris Badenov.

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Oh I understand the "escapism" part, and the concept of "cultural literacy" (E.D. Hirsch wrote a book about it), but how do these shows help us understand the world? And usually this author has the more modest claim of understanding merely American culture rather than the whole world.

I watch sitcoms for escapism and fun, but I avoid nearly all non-comedy dramas on TV, maybe because I just don't seem to 'get' them in some basic way. (The crime ones especially I just find depressing.) So I guess I'm open to the concept, but don't understand it.

Of course, it's possible I don't really WANT to understand the world!

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I think one reason 'Dallas' did so well (as did some others on the list), is that they are critical as to the richest Americans. Dallas in particular came at a time of high oil prices, something that many wanted bashing of those that had huge gains by thier ownership of oil wells. It showed the rich characters as lacking morals in their sexual behaviors, business dealings, ruin of others and so on.

"Sex and the City", despite it trappings, to me was more about the friendship of these 4 women. It shows them having ups and downs, supportive of each other, having flaws but in the end, the friendship continues. MASH was also about friendship, dealing with challanging situations and people as well as the inhumanity of war.

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The author is probably a 30 something, early 40's age, and these are the shwos she grew up with, with a few exceptions. Melrose Place? No one I know ever watched it.

How could she omit the truly ground breaking shows like All in The Family? That one blazed a trail for cutting edge, socially relevant comedy, prior to that, the tv landscape was littered with banal stuff like Leave it to Beaver, Green Acres, etc.

My personal favorite, WKRP, also dealt with deep societal issues that plagued the 70's, which along with the 60's was a defining era of the latter 20th century.

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Twin Peaks was more influential than All in the Family? Do some research on that show - the spin-offs it generated, the issues it addressed that no other TV show had dared to touch. By poking fun at what was then the conventional wisdom, it changed the landscape not only of TV, but of culture in general.

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Read the book, "Belly Up" and discover that Dallas wasn't even about Dallas. I doubt anyone cares. None of the fancy people on the coasts give a goddam about us poor dumb folks here in the bible-belt, which is a damn shame. They just want to feed us tv shows and tell us how we are destroying the world with our churches and what not....lawl

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The only show I agree with that’s on the list is Star Trek, especially TNG. I think TNG is more in line with what its creator, Gene Roddenberry, had in mind even when he was doing the original story. Star Trek, especially TNG, is a future where science and reason finally wins out over superstition and stupidity. It’s a Universe without religion and God. Everyone thinks that a world without religion would be a world without morality or ethics but I think just the opposite is true. It would be a world that would embrace democratic and socialistic principles, which in one of the Star Trek movies, The Wrath of Khan, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.” Isn’t that the prime example of The Golden Rule? The Vulcan’s, after all, are the epitome of what an atheist culture would look like.

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I could go on forever. Don't know how the author made these choices.

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Yes all of those shows were cute, but understanding "the world", really, NOT. While "Buffy" and "Charlie's Angels" may (maybe not) have attempted to portray women as strong, independent, and kick butt types - many women all over "this real world" are still treated as second class citizens and/or sex slaves, unable to get redress from their own families or governments!

TV be is MSM or "shows" have been used to both dumb down and distract Americans from the realities of what is happening in this nation: corrupt politicians selling out to the highest bidder for private gain (oh wait - that's DALLAS), the Corporate high-jacking of "our government", 2 unnecessary wars (oh wait that's MASH), a boorish bullying arrogant spoiled frat boy into government that spied on it's own citizens "trust no one" (oh wait, X-Files)! See "we" don't need to "watch tv", because the reality is "the truth is out there" and if people would take off the blinders, and demand both responsibility and accountability from the government this nation might not be as polarized as a nation, and we actually might not have been so afraid that we allowed this nation to become dragged into these wars of choice!

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Give the author credit for coming up with a list that's different. If her intent is prove the banality of TV, her list makes a strong argument. Here's a list of the shows that really schooled America (some are more or less non-fiction) ....

1)Jack Parr/Johnny Carson (Tonight Show)
2) I Love Lucy
3) That Was the Week That Was
4) American Bandstand
5) CBS News with Walter Cronkite
6) All in the Family
7) MASH
8) Star Trek
9) The Wire
10) Dead Zone/Medium/Ghost Whisperer/Dead Like Me/Pushing Daisies

Parr and Lucy showed us the absurdity of American life, "TWTWT" the absurdity of the news. American Bandstand and CBS News limned the culture. All in the Family, Mash, Star Trek and The Wire raised important questions. The last bullet comprises shows which seem to be designed to alleviate fears of the afterlife --- WTF, must be important!

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There seems to be a concerted effort here at Alternet to get progressives more interested in watching tv. For the life of me, I can't figure out why. Aren't most americans stupid enough already?

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...that Alternet was pushing on its readers.

Now TV?

Nice try, Alternet. I know all about your left-wing liberal conspiracy takeover plan. No way will I ever become a pot-smoking Islamic homosexual vegan glued to the television set.

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"Pop-culture literacy is as helpful as historical literacy when it comes to understanding today's world..."

An absurd and entirely unsupported statement which is supposedly the central message of the article. If the author is going to base a four article series on this very controversial point, don't you think she should dedicate at least a sentence or two to supporting the assertion? My first post to the first article said, "TV is at best escapism and T&A," and with Buffy the author has gotten around to TV at its best. As much affection as I have for the work of Joss Whedon, I must say that it is ridiculous to assert that Buffy-watching is essential to the education of a progressive mind. Beyond that, it should be pointed out that all of this mixed bag of reccommendations are not TV shows, but instead ex-TV shows. Consequently the author's point is not only ridiculously wrong, it is irrelevant to current TV programming.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIZ205ccX8M

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Haven't we seen this article already - twice ... this is like talking to my friends who are addicted to TV.... "Oh but you HAVE to see the History Channel..." "Oh but how can you miss Law and Order?" Quite frankly the only way TV changes the world is by changing the news to infotainment so TV news junkies no longer get credible news... and passing on the Republican talking points.... now THAT and their insistence that there is another viewpoint on global warming (that it isn't happening) REALLY makes a change.. or a lack of change. The power brokers don't care what the uneducated TV viewer thinks or believes as long as they are passive about bailing out the banks and handing more business without controls to the Insurance and Pharmaceutical companies and using every last bit of coal they can wrest from the earth and use to pollute the air.

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I have to say with the exception of Star Trek none of them belong on this list. What part of WORLD culture does Dallas explain? Less than one percent of one percent of America is anything like the people in Dallas.

Charlies Angels was nothing but bubblegum. It was full of A-Team style violence and dumb plots. I know police officers who have gone decades without ever drawing their gun. The Angels then and CSI now show bullets flying about with the regularity of starlings.

Sadly the author also made some mistakes in her research. No one ever said "Beam me up Scotty".

Buffy did not start out as an orphan, but as the daughter of a single parent Joyce, who died of a brain aneurysm at the end of season five. A younger sister, Dawn arrived in season five as well. She was not a true sibling, but the Key turned into human form.

Can we go back to real reporting now, instead of watching tv. I read popwatch and twp for that.

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In my opinion you can get more out of comic books than the shows mentioned here.
Other than some mildly entertaning moments, NONE of these shows display much in the way of any meaningful message.
Remember the old Captain Marvel comics, before the nitwits at the Comics Code ruined it?
Now, there was entertainment for all age groups.
For the kids, the evil Dr. Savannah was forever cooking up some nefarious plot to take over the world or create a major pain in the ass for Billy Batson, AKA Captain Marvel.
He employed a hypnotic device disguised as a medical tool to give poor Billy "shazamphobia", therefore making it impossible for him to transform himself into superhero, Captain Marvel for fear of the word "Shazam".
And, how about the giantic hammer the evil scientist constructed to extort the world to bend to his will or else face the destruction of the world via the hammer?
This comic book was clearly written on two levels, one for the kids to thrill over and the other with subtle humor for the adults.
Naturally, the fatheads at the Comics Code either ignored or were BRIBED to ignore the value of this means of entertainment, and killed Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain Marvel jr.
In my mind, none of the aforementioned TV shows would hold a candle to the Marvels or their lessons on life.

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Who cares about the rest? Cartoons rule !

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(When Olbermann says Good Night and Good Luck, he evinces a desire to channel one of the best, and highest-principled, reporters this country has ever had. Murrow had more to do with ending the Cold War than Reagan ever did, by starting the smackdown on Joe McCarthy, and reports such as Harvest of Shame, which nobody would dream of putting on major network prime time nowadays. Below cited from his convention speech to the Radio-Television News Directors Association, 15 Oct 1958, and I fear he was optimistic.)

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

full text http://www.turnoffyourtv.com General Commentary, Hidden Agenda.

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To understand MY world, you'd need to add Monty Python and a bunch of other shows.

And I question whether any world where "Melrose Place" is considered essential really needs to be understood by outsiders.

But here's a BIG omission from your list: Any hospital shows. "St. Elsewhere," "Scrubs," "House" .... ?? (Okay, yeah, "Hospital" is the "H" in "M*A*S*H," but I don't think it counts.) Without hospital shows and the worship of Big Medicine they encourage, would our health industry look anything like it does?

Without the gadgetry gee-whiz of the CSI shows and the like, would our "War On Drugs" have any support?


And how can you leave out "The Rockford Files"? That was the perfect show. Everybody loves James Garner, and for those who don't, he gets beat up every episode. And there's that amazingly satisfying synth line in the show's theme. It beats "Charlie's Angels" any day of the week.

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Before Star Trek even graced the waves, there was a sci fi fable on for two years: The Outer Limits.

It was clearly a political/socials statement. (It came out again in the 90s and many of them are even better, but it didn't have much of an audience.)

Then there's "The Twilight Zone," stories made up to make a social/political point in ways that Hollywood wouldn't not the point(s) being made.

If there is such a list, it's invalid without those classics.

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We used to tune into the TV to escape our stressful lives. It was cheap entertainment and we could escape into it. Now we have shows that reinforce our daily stresses, catapult political/corporate propaganda, or cater to our most voyeuristic tendencies. Haven't experienced your child being kidnapped yet? Tune into ten shows a night that will let you vicariously experience the emotions that you would go through.
The show 'Happy Days' was a pivotal point in the paradigm shift. The character of the Fonz was designed to shift the bad boy image from 'On the Waterfront' character played by Brando into a sellout do gooder who defended the status quo.

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The title of this article is grandoise, the content is vapid, insipid, and a waste of time. Why on earth did you post it, other than as a laughingstock?

I perhaps have watched a grand total of two of these shows and I understand the world just fine. It appears to be written by someone who thinks if she's watched all these shows, then she understands the world better than if she actually had to leave her TV set and face reality!

I might buy the inclusion of "Star Trek," in terms of entertainment, but that's it--and even that one is maybe #20 when it comes to "understanding the world." To me that means something more, uumm, educational.

To match the title, here are ten shows that may actually help us understand the world (yes, it was hard to find ten):
1. Jon Stewart.
2. Steven Colbert.
3. 60 Minutes.
4. The McLaughlin Group.
5. Jim Leher Newshour.
6. Keith Olbermann (if he even has a show).
7. Rachael Maddow.
8. "The Smothers Brothers" (if those shows aren't on DVD, they should be).
9. At the Movies.
10. "Survivor."

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An X-Files fan, I had "The Truth is UP there" emblazoned on the back of my climbing helmet. To a climber, everyone I ever encountered on any mountain knew where the original ("out" instead of "up") came from and what I meant by having it on my helmet (because the climb is the thing). Many a night around a stove and tea (because you hurl most else) I've had great conversations about not only episodes but the ole text-to-self, text-to-world, text-to-text conversations that drive human culture in the first place.

Pup cultural crits help us writers pay some bills now and again. And it's fun.

Mostly it's about common ground with strangers. We Trekkies and Filers know each other, even when we don't.

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Popular TV works just like popular movies and popular fiction: people plug in their eyes and identify with the action. Something has to be happening to the characters that the reader or viewer wants to feel is happening to him/herself. We live the vicarious fantasy. If you really want to know what the 1900 world was like, read the trash fiction, ladies' magazine stories etc of the era. Same thing now.

Sometimes the identification is therapeutic. For example, after World War II when Japan had experienced the atomic bomb, radiation sickness etc, the Japanese movie industry put out a lot of trash movies in which some kind of monster is destroying/devastating/devouring civilization until, with courage and skill, some individual or group vanquishes the evil-doer. Thus our fear is raised but we identify with the victor (for good) and feel safer.

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I just wanted to repeat a quote from a TV reviewer of the LA Times regarding 'The X-Files': "I liked this show better when it was called 'Twin Peaks.'"

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Not one Norman Lear sitcom? What about The Prisoner? And if you don't understand the world after watching The Sopranos then maybe you should just remain indoors.

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I often think people are way too critical of the lighter fare on Alternet, but this time I have to agree with them.

I'm all for escapist fiction and even television. I watch some dumb shows just to unwind. I even agree there is some real value and insight to be gained from popular entertainment -- comic books, pop novels, movies and television.

This list, however, is horrible. There were a couple of worthwhile shows like MASH and Star Trek. But Dallas? Melrose Place? I'll even give you Buffy, but some of the shows on this list are direct contributors to the decline of our civilization.

Seriously, I think this is the lamest article I've ever read on Alternet.

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It's Edie Falco, in Nurse Jackie, on Showtime.

I whipped through all the on-demand episodes, and did the whole season in two sittings, and now I'm drooling.

It's wonderfully complex in character, and shows all the random weird ways of human relationships. People are great sometimes, fucked up sometimes, and sometimes make disastrous mistakes. Life.

It's set in an ER, but it could be anyplace--the setting isn't one of the characters for a change, just provides window dressing and detail.

I love Edie Falco. Is the show saying something about our culture? While showing us how people today function in order to get by their hard days without going nuts, it also shows how life just rolls right along, except when it doesn't.

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Lady you are totally and utterly bonkers.
People that think like you scare me. Or should I say people that dont think. Rather, People who are incapable of thought.

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But in my world the shows that shaped me were
1. That Was The Week That Was/Saturday Night Live/Soul Train tie
2. David Frost/Star Trek tie
3. Julia/ Get Christie Love tie
4. Phil Donahue/Smothers Brothers tie
5. Arsenio Hall
6. Homoside Life On The Streets
7. Laugh In
8. Cosby Show
9. Different World
10. Living Single

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But in my world the shows that shaped me were
1. That Was The Week That Was/Saturday Night Live/Soul Train tie
2. David Frost/Star Trek tie
3. Julia/ Get Christie Love tie
4. Phil Donahue/Smothers Brothers tie
5. Arsenio Hall
6. Homoside Life On The Streets
7. Laugh In
8. Cosby Show
9. Different World
10. Living Single

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How can Seinfeld not make the list (or any comment so far)?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins_(TV_series)

Tony

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"You can learn more about America by watching one half-hour of Let's Make a Deal than you can by watching Walter Cronkite for an entire month."
-- Monty Hall (Or not.)

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"10 TV Shows You Have to Watch to Understand the World"

They are ALL AMERICAN

How The Hell Can You Understand The World By Looking Up Your Own ARSEHOLE?

Tony

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Even if one disagrees with the ten selections, there is, or ought to be, a useful point here: a society's favored narratives can reveal much about it. That doesn't mean that any one of them necessarily spells out what is significant, or aims to enlighten. Often the aim is simply to "entertain," to get people to watch (or read or whatever). And passive reception is encouraged. Nonetheless, thinking has gone into the production of even what passes for veg-out fare, and it is possible to reconstruct that thinking, and perhaps to discover elements that the creators of the production weren't even fully aware of. A show that has been extremely successful, as gauged by ratings, length of time on air, and frequency of references to it, has in some way(s) connected with important social currents and undercurrents. Baywatch, for eg, seemed (to me) pretty mindless and intent on being so. But trying to understand why so many found it entertaining--and it couldn't have been just Pamela Anderson's upfront charms, as similar visual splendor has been featured prominently on many other but less successful productions--we can hope to understand something about America's values, preconceptions, and assumptions. Often what emerges from such pondering isn't fresh news. But sometimes there are surprises.

In any case, not all popular TV shows are, or are intended to be, mindless entertainment.

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one an idea into how millions of Americans turned out...

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It's interesting to compare how TV has changed through the decades.

Cop shows:
Dragnet - Adam 12 - The Mod Squad - Cagney & Lacy - Hill Street Blues - NYPD Blue - The Wire

Teen shows:
Happy Days - Room 222 - The Partridge Family - 90210 - My So-Called Life - Veronica Mars

Family Sitcoms:
Father Knows Best - All in the Family - The Cosby Show - The Simpsons - ?

Medical Dramas:
Marcus Welby, MD - Emergency - ER - Gray's Anatomy

Science Fiction:
Land of the Giants - Star Trek - Babylon 5 - Firefly - Battlestar Galactica

Legal shows:
Perry Mason - The Paper Chase - Matlock - LA Law - Law & Order - Boston Legal

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I would just like to remark that the title is rather incorrect, since those shows have only shaped the US mentality, the rest of the world did not see these, and if they did it was so far out for them as Mars is for Earth. Apart from that, the shows are a perfect example of what mentality has prevailed over the last few years, and even some of the shows that at one time seemed to be rather feminist or innovative, turned out to be the opposite in the end. Take Charlie's Angels, all thin, beautiful, perfect women... a lot of women try to look like them, even act like them, and men gave the orders... hmm. The same happens with Sex in the City, even though the group shows a lot of female problems and how we cope: it is not an example of real life women, at least not in my circle. For example, I know that in Europe women don't really enjoy these series as much, and I can imagine what its like for an Indian to watch them. Women come in all shapes and sizes, and that is the real beauty of us. As for the other series, M.A.S.H. was fun and ironical, and Twin Peaks entertaining. Yes, all these series have been important to us, but let's remember: they have been about us, not the rest of the world out there.

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And just which world is the author talking about?? Following this reasoning, individuals from cultures that aren't deriving their identity directly and exclusively from American television have no shot at understanding "the world."

Um, why do you suppose we're so universally resented?

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