TV's Golden Age is Now

In general, TV just sucks. The only thing rivaling television's potential to educate, entertain and transform is its near-infinite ability to make viewers dumber. Even during the so-called Golden Age of TV, about 1954 to 1961 for U.S. viewers, the few bright spots were overshadowed by then-FCC chair Newton Minow's "vast wasteland." The bright spots weren't all that bright, either; try watching a Twilight Zone marathon sometime and see how well some of those howlers hold up.

Yet, despite the deluge of reality shows, witless sitcoms and inane soaps, primetime television has noticeably improved in quality over the last decade or so. It used to be that at any given time, picking out the few well-made, intelligent shows on TV was like picking a specific needle out of a basket of needles. Finding the good stuff has become easier, and a lot of that can be laid at the feet of a welcome trend: the return of story arcs to primetime TV.

Story arcs-narratives that last multiple episodes or seasons-aren't new. Soap operas were ahead of the pack on this score (though the plots and characters aren't) and even shows like I Love Lucy tried them out. But, they usually weren't involved or overlapping, as we see now on shows like Damages or Dexter. Most TV of the time was structured episodically for a couple of reasons. TV executives long believed American viewers weren't interested in long, involved storylines, and the Nielsen numbers seemed to back them up. Many popular genres, like cop shows, work well episodically. Plus, it took most of the 1950s for TV to displace radio and socializing as the home entertainment default, so TV shows were thought of at best as ephemeral, especially since consumers couldn't record and save programs.

As usual, though, the main factor behind TV's episodic nature was money. Shows with detailed arcs cost more: higher-quality scripts, devoted actors, yadda yadda. Also, conventional wisdom warned against story arcs because it might kill the cash cow: syndication. Selling a show into syndication is lucrative because you get return on your investment for decades. If the network has a series of self-contained episodes, no problem; it doesn't matter what order you show them in, you can sell them to anybody able to broadcast, and the suits are happy. Shows where every episode builds on the ones before and plots take more than one season to come to fruition are a harder sell. All told, that's why up until around 1981, virtually every series created for American TV was episodic in nature.

Thanks to shows like Hill Street Blues, Wiseguy and a few others, things started to turn around in the 1980s, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that viewers started seeing better primetime shows en masse.One reason for that was, more or less, HBO. While both HBO and Showtime had developed several series already, HBO was the leader on cable for damn good TV, through shows ranging from The Dennis Miller Show to Oz. However, the renaissance in long-arc narratives really kicked off in January 1999, when HBO premiered a show about a Mafioso in therapy. With The Sopranos, HBO redefined "watercooler" TV, using what is the most financially successful cable series ever and starting a trend of shows imitating the best parts of David Chase's baby: excellent acting, top-notch writing and overlapping, intricate storylines played out over multiple episodes and seasons.

But, the little network that could got some help along the way. DVDs hit the market in 1997, quickly beating out sliced bread as the best thing ever. With far greater picture and sound quality, space for extras and greater shelf life, the DVD was perfect for TV and movie fans. When the first season of The Sopranos hit DVD in 2000, it opened up new markets, specifically folks who didn't have HBO and people who love watching an entire season in one sitting. What was good for The Sopranos was good for other series as well, particularly series that struggled for ratings (Babylon 5) or anything on Fox that wasn't The Simpsons.

Still, 1999 had more gifts to offer the TV cognoscenti. The next thing to outrank sliced bread on the awesome list popped up in Prince's favorite party year: digital video recorders (DVR). If DVDs opened up an avenue for viewers to catch shows they missed, DVRs changed how viewers watched TV in the first place. Viewers with DVRs could pause TV whenever they wanted, skip all the commercials and, best of all, record all the episodes of their favorite shows. DVRs freed viewers to watch their favorites however they wanted, on their own schedules.Now, if you're a junkie for good TV, you're loaded with options. Basic cable networks play entire runs of series in order, letting you catch up or just feed your eyeballs until they can't stand no more. Networks like FX (The Shield, Sons of Anarchy) and AMC (Mad Men, Breaking Bad), which get a looser hold from the FCC than the Big Three, have developed edgy programming that suck in audiences hungry for complex characters and stories. As for DVDs...well, if you can get Petticoat Junction on DVD (and you can), that should pretty much sum that up. Mix it together and serve, and it's easy to conclude that the Golden Age of TV, to paraphrase any of the characters from the Battlestar Galactica reboot, is right frakkin' now.