One of the first dramas I watched
on a weekly basis was Melrose Place.
And I watched it fully aware of
what it was. I knew that it wasn't Picket Fences or Chicago Hope. I
knew it wasn't Homicide or The X-Files. At times when the
storylines grew ridiculous (which was basically every episode) I often changed
channels while I was watching it. Each season I grew more ashamed that I was
looking at a series so ridiculous. But right up until it came to an end in May
of 1999, I couldn't stop watching it.
Back then, if you watched a
series like that, it was called a guilty pleasure. And there was nothing wrong
with that. Aaron Spelling essentially made his career by creating guilty
pleasures. He'd been doing before I was born, with shows like Fantasy Island
and Charlie's Angels, he'd been the minds behind such nighttime soaps
as Dynasty, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest, he'd created that
quintessential 1990s soap Beverly Hills, 90210 and he created a lot of
other series like that right up until his death. No one ever pretended that an
Aaron Spelling show was high art; it wasn't L.A. Law or St. Elsewhere
when he was at his peak nor was it anywhere near the world of shows like The
Sopranos or The West Wing when he passed away in 2006.
Aaron Spelling was a success
because he knew something very important: sometimes when you're watching
television you have to turn your brain off. Yes we know we should all be
watching Shakespeare and operas but most of our minds are geared towards simpler
things and even if we like other great dramas (which I do) we also need to
watch shows that are kind of brainless (which I do). Even after Aaron Spelling
was gone I have constantly watched TV shows that I knew were terrible and had
'no nutritional value' as I put it but I just couldn't stop watching. I felt
this way with so many series: I felt it with House of Lies and Black
Monday; I felt it with Scream Queens and I felt it with Riverdale
(for a while at least).
There's an argument that the rise
of the Golden Age of television did much to kill the idea of the guilty
pleasure. With so much great TV on the air, it was a status symbol to admit you
watched every episode of Mad Men and Deadwood while no one
admitted to watching Fuller House or every version of the Real Housewives
even though millions clearly were. A greater argument, I would add, is that
so many showrunners began to state, with all sincerity, that their series were
in fact quality dramas rather than guilty pleasures and by and large the media
let this slide.
Here I find myself doing what I
do so often: blame Shonda Rhimes. I'd argue her greatest font of creativity has
been to convince a vast number of the public for the last quarter of a century that
Shondaland is a producer of quality television rather than soap operas and trash.
And part of me really does wonder how much race does play into it. Grey's
Anatomy has always been more concerned with sex than medical drama from the
moment it debuted but Rhimes has done everything in her power to tell you that
it is a 'serious medical drama'. She says this even as the staff spends more
time in the hospital sleeping with each other then operating on each other,
then partner swapping as it suits them before going back to their old partners.
She says this even as interns see ghosts of their dead lovers, have sex with
them, convince their life boyfriends its real only to realize she's suffering
from brain cancer. She does even as the doctors on the staff have a higher
mortality right then the patients in the hospital. If Aaron Spelling or Darren
Star was the major mind behind Grey's Anatomy I don't think anyone would
argue that this show was a soap opera and had been from the start.
But because Rhimes is a woman of color
and because she is an advocate for women, minorities and members of the LGBTQ+ community
in her series everyone says that she is a producer of great art. That the
storylines of Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder are so
ludicrous they wouldn't have passed muster on Dynasty much less The West
Wing or Damages is swept under the rug. She can even create a series
where black people are members of the gentry of regency England and where Queen
Charlotte is allowed to become English nobility – while the slave trade is
still going on – and it is barely blinked at by critics or viewers. If Rhimes
were just willing to acknowledge that she was creating guilty pleasures and
that her shows were not art, I'd be willing to go along with it. But because
she insists that these are series that have to be taken seriously – and most of
her series do have very little lightness in them – the viewer watches Bridgerton
unironically convinced it is great drama when it has a more preposterous plot
line than anything going on in the Upside Down.
And I think that in the age of
streaming so many viewers have to believe that if they watch a show that is as
absurd as this: it either has to have value or they're watching it ironically.
I suspect that's why in the last decade the term 'hate-watching' was coined. This
term is used most often for Emily in Paris and Sex & The City continuation…And
Just Like That.
First things first Darren Star is
connected to both shows and I don't think that's a coincidence. Star cut his
teeth under Aaron Spelling and the two collaborated on many projects. Sex
& The City would not have existed without Spelling's help. Now for the
record I always thought the original show was little better than a guilty
pleasure, though I acknowledge I was never its intended audience. So there's an
argument that the people who claim to 'hate watch' it would have claimed they
were doing the same thing for Sex & The City thirty years ago.
There's an argument that for
these shows, particularly Emily, that the people who started watching it
did so because they found it in an algorithm and were too lazy to stop. That
is, to put it eloquently, crap. That is excusable for one episode, maybe the
first two or three. But you don't watch one whole season of a series because
you're not getting some pleasure out of it, even if its 'only' a guilty one.
Nor, if you truly hate a show, do you watch multiple seasons of it. At a
certain point, the algorithm has to step aside and you have to take responsibility
for your actions.
So I think its time for all of
those people who claim that are only 'hatewatching' Emily in Paris or …And
Just Like That to face a real truth. You like these shows. Unironically.
They are probably both in the 'so bad, it's good' category and they may both be
trainwrecks. I don't know I'm never going to watch them because I would never
seek them out and if Netflix or Max told me too I would change to something
else immediately. But if you started watching them a couple of years ago and
you're still watching them now it's time to take the first step and admit
you like them.
And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with
watching pure cheese. Back in the old days that's how networks made most of
their money. Baywatch was, from a creative standpoint, one of the worst
shows in television history but it lasted a decade. I'm sure everyone who
watched it lied and said they spent their time watching ER or NYPD
Blue or Boston Legal instead. Hell, probably a fair amount of them
did. That didn't mean they didn't watch that show or Melrose Place or so
many of the other trashy shows that populated the WB or syndication during the
1990s. Someone had to be or they wouldn't have stayed on the air for years.
But inside all of us we want to
admit we're more cultured or erudite than we actual are. So we all claim that
we wouldn't be caught dead watching Keeping Up With The Kardashians or Real
Housewives of Boise or The Platinum Bachelor. But based on their longevity
of the franchises, people clearly are. These shows would not last decades if
they weren't being watched by millions of viewers. Just because no one will
admit to being one of them (I've never met anyone who admitted to it) doesn't
mean they don't exist.
And it's the same thing with so
many of these trashy shows on streaming services and cable. Yes we know we
should have been watching The Crown or Nobody Wants This on
Netflix or Hacks and Love and Death on Max. Maybe some of you
really did! But it's okay to admit you watched the others.
Hell I'm no different. Earlier
this year I watched every episode of Netflix's The Perfect Couple and
Starz's The Couple Next Door. Both series were little more than high
class soap operas, somewhat more elevated than many shows on their network, but
they were trashy just the same. I could have stopped watching either. But I
chose to watch them all the way through. Was I ashamed of myself for doing so?
A bit. But I don't regret doing it either. Sometimes you have to turn your
brain off. Hell both shows have been renewed for another season! I'll probably
watch both of them!
See how easy it is? I feel better
already. And you will too. The next time you decide to 'hate-watch' the next
season of Emily in Paris don't tell yourself you're doing it by
accident. Say that deep within your soul, there is a part of you that genuinely
finds some kind of entertainment value in this series and that there's some
part of you that enjoys it. Hell, you can always lie and just say you watched Ozark
or Squid Game if you feel guilty about it. Your friends aren't going
to disown you if you say you like Emily in Paris unironically. They
might even be willing to join you in a watch party.
Of course this kind of viewing is
only in effect for a series that is genuinely cheesy and has no quality.
For those who claim to be hate-watching shows that actually are good and do
have value, I have harsher words. But that's for another article. After all, The
Gilded Age debuts this weekend. And for those of you who claim you watch it
for those same reasons…well, I do judge you. It doesn't mean I don't have an
explanation as to why some people act this way, but for them…well, all in good
time.
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