Richard's Online Journal

[14/05/07] Stupidity TV

Bones: Great TV. Lousy picnics.

Something I’ve taken to over the last year or so is what I like to call Stupidity TV. I don’t mean shows like Big Brother or Fame Academy or Who Wants To Marry A Rhino - I try to pretend those things don’t exist, and deal with any evidence to the contrary with a barbed fly-swatter. Friends, family and colleagues have slowly but painfully come to understand this.

No, I mean shows on subjects I know absolutely nothing about, and likely never will. It’s fun, watching - say - House, and getting emotionally invested in jargon and terminology I haven’t a chance of grasping.

Yet by watching, somehow I feel smarter. I feel confident, shouting at the characters for their inability to realise it’s the common cold, with the screen never judging when it turns out to be bubonic plague. And that’s fun. Sure, not the same kind as trying to out-think Jonathan Creek (sigh… oh for another show that let you play along, without incredibly easy mindbenders like most Monk episodes, or irritating off-screen clues like in almost every Agatha Christie adaptation). But a different kind of fun; mixing the illusion of intelligence with the reality of flopping on a sofa, and enjoying watching other people trying to be smart.

As an example, in three seasons of House, I’ve learned precisely three things. First: It’s never lupus. Second: Bring psychology books to the hospital instead of a Nintendo DS, because the pain’s only going to stop when your doctors get over their daddy issues. Third: Never let them shove barbed wire up your penis tube* on a hunch. Well, not until they’ve tried three other things, and at least one of them vitamins.

(* Ladies, please substitute a suitably squirmworthy body part here. If I do it, someone will mistake it for some horrible act of sadomasochistic misogynism, notice the games posts scattered around, and I’ll end up having Jack Thompson camping out in my fridge or something. None of us want that.)

Sci-fi tends to be the exact opposite - well, sci-fi and shows like 24, which are actually less believable than green aliens from the planet Zog showing up and not merely using English, but English slang. This is because shows like that tend to involve computers, and that’s a subject I know a little bit about. It’s always handled bady; always. Even my Stupidity TV shows often falter with it, like the wonderful, wonderful Bones’ silly holographic table that can show full 3D reconstructions of guest stars based on nothing more than a knee-bone. Nnngh.

(A few other cases that spring to mind: Every time Chloe opens her mouth in 24, a series I stopped watching when it became obvious that the writers cared about the storyline even less than the members of the audience watching it for the like, totally awesome torture scenes, Stargate SG-1’s agonising product placement that saw Sam Carter using alien technology whole civilisations beyond us on a daily basis, yet still lugging a Dell XPS gaming rig with her around the galaxy, and any time when a snot-nosed little kid sits down in front of someone’s computer and cracks the Pentagon’s master password in three goes. It takes at least five, and they bloody well know it.)

I’m sure shows like House leave doctors squirming… hell, even I have to ask why they have to do things like running bloodwork and taking X-Rays on cases that have supposedly baffled the other doctors. What tests did the first guys run? I’m assuming a catheter was involved, because they clearly took the piss.

But when I watch it, I can be impressed by what a genius House is. I can watch Bones, and totally believe that every old corpse found in the street gets a full work-up by a team of trained professionals who always get their man. I can even watch forensics shows without wondering how guys who spend their whole day breathing over petridishes full of DNA evidence don’t get charged for every crime in the city by its laziest cop. Just.

But the next time I see a cop show with a chalk outline contaminating the crime-scene, I’m writing a very, very angry letter to someone. I have my limits.