From the Archives: How HBO Changed My Life

So, before I started this blog, I had another blog simply titled “Chase’s Blog About Stuff”. It was the same kind of idea I had for this site, except it was just me, and I talked about sports randomly too.

Needless to say, I like this site a lot better already.

Before that blog crashed and burned due to vacations in which I couldn’t get any articles out and the mayhem that is college orientation, I posted 7 true articles. The first was on HBO, a channel I had never before experienced, and the impact and importance I believe it has on the television world. I stick to most of what I said with a notable exception: I put Starz in the same category as HBO when I should have written about AMC. I had not actually seen a show from Starz yet, but I had heard great things about the Spartacus series. After watching it with Jason (Junior Varsity), I can see I was mistaken (review coming soon-ish), and that change is reflected below.

I’ll be posting articles from my archive over time, but for now, I hope you enjoy “How HBO Changed My Life”:

While movies and video games are indeed very popular, there is no form of media more widespread than television. The print media is all but dead, and movies can’t come into your home until they’ve been “formatted to fit your television screen” (the fact that they have to tell us that the movie had to be reformatted to fit our screen implies that there are people at their houses watching the movie wondering “How did they do that? It’s impossible!” and driving themselves mad with fits as they try to wrap their head around it. Honestly, we get it. Images have been adjusted to fit my television. Much appreciated. You don’t have to brag about it at the beginning of every movie). And many people don’t have the disposable income to immerse themselves completely in the video gaming world, if at all (and, let’s be honest, if you didn’t have a controller in your hands starting at a young age, maneuvering through all the controls to figure out how to make the character do what you want is not the easiest skill to learn). 

This has put television in a class of its own as an artistic medium. Almost everyone owns a television nowadays, and the vast majority of people at least have basic cable. Assuming people buy the most basic of cable packages, one can assume the average individual with a television has around 70 channels at their disposal at any given time, supposedly covering all demographics to appease the massive audience it has. There’s so much saturation in television, “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” actually exists, and has multiple seasons! I mean, really! (There’s probably room for a whole other rant here, but I’ll let it slide for now. Let me know in the comments if you’re interested in hearing about how reality television has completely and utterly failed me).

All of this leads me to only one question: Why does so much of it suck?

A medium with such a large built in audience should be able to take risks, or at least it would appear so at first glance. After all, Fox, NBC, ABC, and CBS have all had horrible flops and come out of them completely intact. It seems logical that they would invest their hard earned cash into meaningful shows with true artistic merit that challenge the very fabric of our society and push us to do the same. Instead, they wallow in reality t.v. shows like “America’s Got An Hour of Time to Kill Before They Head to Bed” and “Dancing with D-List Celebrities about whom You Never Cared and Probably Never Will Again Once They’re Eliminated”. 

As Occam’s Razor states, the most obvious answer is usually the most accurate one. The big networks make the vast majority of the revenue from advertisers. Those ads make them money as long as the viewership is large, so the key to make the most money is the make the most cost effective shows that give the highest viewership. As long as America watches reality television, it’s so cheap to make that networks will never stop.

But what about shows like House M.D., you might ask? Well, I had followed House until the seventh season, but the predictable plots (just once, I want it to be lupus, then I can stop watching half an hour in and do something else) and characters that started to go in and out through Fox’s revolving door depleted the meaning. Besides, the schtick got old. I get it, House is depressed and doesn’t like other people because of it. Healing him made him boring, but once he’s happy, having him go back to the stupid behavior from when he was miserable is irrational. Eventually, after 155 episodes, the sarcastic quips lose their zing, the characters lose their edge, and the only reason everyone’s still on board is the built-in audience that keeps hoping the show will return to its glory days.

I had all but given up on television as a medium capable of holding my attention for an extended period of time until my friend showed me a completely legal and not in any way immoral way to catch up on the shows I had heard were truly worth it; shows that were built by channels not dependent on ad revenue, but instead on loyal subscription buyers who would only stay around if the product remained strong. 

I’m writing, of course, about HBO.

See, the Sopranos has always been put forth as the father of the modern television drama and as the standard by which all modern shows must be compared. I was skeptical at first (13 episode seasons? What is this madness?), but I went in with an open mind and was promptly rewarded for it.

The Sopranos isn’t just good. House was good, and I already ripped a show I had enjoyed to shreds three paragraphs ago. The Sopranos is by far the greatest show I’ve ever seen, so much so that I have plowed through 18 episodes in four days (a review of the whole series will be up as soon as I finish the whole series, which, given I have four and a half more seasons, could be a while. If you want a review of each season, let me know in the comments). The characters are all well-developed and react appropriately when their environment changes. The cinematography is gorgeous, with every scene shot such that it perfectly matches the atmosphere of the characters present. The drama feels real, with no one ever reacting on sudden whims known in the business as “plot devices”. Watching these characters develop in front of my eyes was the most satisfying experience I have ever had with a medium that didn’t involve a controller.

In my opinion, the key is the in the writing. There is never any doubt that these are bad men. They are mafiosos intent on taking out those who stand in their way or refuse to pay them their due respect. Instead of trying to make them likable, the writing and characterization emphasizes their internal struggles as reflected by their actions to reveal the humanity of an otherwise inhuman group of individuals. It’s an incredibly powerful message, and I’ve come out of each episode I’ve seen with at least one “wow” moment that made me realize something either about myself or the world around me. In other words, my humble thanks goes out to all those involved in the making of this show. Thank you for an overwhelmingly enjoyable experience.

To summarize succinctly: if you haven’t done so already, check this show out, along with the other stuff that channels like HBO and AMC are making. They’re so far above the cable networks in the race for quality it’s mind-boggling. If you want a high quality television drama with characters you can watch develop and a truly immersive story, avoid the networks and enjoy the channels built with people like you and I in mind.