The Norman Transcript

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January 3, 2013

Sports only genre to revive plotless TV

By Jay Cronley The Norman Transcript

NORMAN — Here’s what we can expect from TV in 2013:

Sex: Plots went out with the turn of the century. That’s because the industry is all out of bad ideas.

They ran out of good ideas in the nineties, then it was on to the awful stuff, the cop shows featuring murders that could never happen in a million years.

One decent definition of fiction is something that could happen but probably won’t. On TV, the murders exist only in the minds of the people who have to get something on paper by tomorrow morning in order to keep their jobs.

There’s no such thing as a plot with enough fiber to twist.

Murder mysteries exist only on the Classics shelf.

Now it’s down to sex.

Some shows look almost exactly the same — “Nashville” and “Smash,” for example, both of which feature nonstop games of musical beds and show the industry to be simple-minded and ugly.

Bad talent show winners: The best of the lot is “The Voice,” which just produced a winner that will probably never be heard from until the former champs are invited back to sing on the show.

The worst is “The X Factor,” featuring revolting judges.

Everybody who can carry a tune three feet has auditioned for one of the talent shows and has been rejected. There is apt to be a run of lousy winners until the current crop of 5-year-olds comes of age.

Unreal “reality shows”: The latest one of this type to be branded as phony is the storage show where, at the bottom of crates of junk, diamonds and gold bars might allegedly be found wrapped in old sweat socks.

On some of the reality tow truck shows featuring hillbillies and those not quite as sharp, many punches are thrown, few land.

On the cooking shows, the chefs will usually be punks.

Bias: The cable news purveyors are already working up some serious, old-fashioned hate for the 2016 election.

Piers Morgan has threatened to leave the United States unless something is done about guns.

Somebody suggested that he leave now and return when measures are signed into law.

Double-talk: Letterman is lazy. Leno is boring.

The same movie-hawking guests move in a trance from one talk show to the other.

Only sports can revive the medium.

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