That one spy show

Tonight I watched my third episode of Alias, that spy show that everyone loves, and I guess I can see the appeal, but I can’t really enjoy it without rolling my eyes every couple of minutes and how contrived it all seems. Perhaps film school has ruined such things for me, or perhaps I just don’t like TV very much, but I have a hard time getting into it. There are elements that I like – I get kind of a kick out of all the spies getting together and going shopping or bowling once in a while, and the fact that the main character works with her sister on a spy team run by her dad and her sister’s dad (who is probably evil??), which conveniently allows for a lot of father-daughter angst, but somehow I can’t get past the artificiality of it all.
The supporting characters all hit their requisite sinister or quirky beats, there’s lots of talk about mysterious plots and prophesies (to be covered in future episodes one assumes), a mission or two inter-cut with lots of kind of boring office/headquarters scenes, and a couple of good spoonfuls of sex and violence.
I used to think that the commercials were what kept me from watching television, but tonight’s episode was the first I watched that hadn’t been Tivo’d, and it was actually the one I enjoyed the most. I think television shows are actually paced for commercials, and although they’re annoying and it is always disturbing to me to hear my friends singing joyfully along with the jingles for life insurance, it seems like shows lose a lot of their punch and tension if you can watch them all in one chunk.
No, I think what keeps me from watching television shows, especially dramas, is the sameness of it all.
Except for the spy-specific elements, the episodes of Alias I saw were not that different from the episode and a half of The O.C. I watched one time – very pretty, entertaining enough to keep you through the commercials, and always promises more of the same the next week. I guess that’s what’s considered good television, but to me it just seems like so much going through the motions. Each episode is like a remix of the same pop song, or at least another pop song by the same artist. Nothing is revealed without setting up something else to come back for the next week, there’s little creative risk-taking involved, no permanent lessons learned by the characters, and with no end in sight there isn’t much of a reason to keep watching for me. I think that without some sort of ending, most stories are robbed of their meaning or purpose. Each episode has some sort of end, but really enjoying the show means you have to keep tuning in next week to find out what happens to the characters! But even with all the exciting cliffhangers and such, I can’t help feeling that whatever happens to them will just be . . . something else. Again.
Last year I took a television writing class at Chapman, one of the best classes I’ve taken anywhere, and our prof frequently brought in guest lecturers from the industry. One of them, the oldest, warned us that his job was not for the light of heart or the idealistic, and he cautioned us about getting into the TV business. “When you get right down to it,” he said, “television is all about numbing or shocking the viewer into sticking around for the commercials. And that’s it.”
And I don’t think I’ve really enjoyed television since then.