The Collective Effervescence Of The Must-See TV Show

OMFG, someone—namely Adam Sternbergh—over at NY Mag is my soul mate. He has a story in this week's issue about how he just can't watch Mad Men even though every one of the two million people who do tune in try to get him to join their corps, like, every 2.5 seconds. He basically argues that since The Sopranos (a show that I, ahem, have never seen a minute of), we've been bombarded by the quality show—the thing you just HAVE to watch:

"Of course, The Sopranos changed all that. It normalized, then popularized, the idea that a TV show could measure up against the best of any art form. It heralded an age of creative latitude for TV creators, attracting vital talent to the medium. And it coincided with the rise of the Internet, which gave ardent TV fans a new place to gather and whip themselves into a froth—as if the office cooler had been transported into a giant echo chamber. All of which created the perfect conditions for a show to be declared the Best Ever—not just an amusing entertainment but a can’t-miss cultural event."

I'm always suspicious of the shows that win this Best Ever title—stuff like Battlestar Galactica, Lost, and Friday Night Lights—and have only become a card-carrying fan club member of one such program: The Wire (don't get me started). I too refuse to watch Mad Men even though K lent me her Season 1 DVDs. It just feels like I'm selling out or caving to the pressure of the masses, like joining Facebook in 2008 or wearing UGGs (ever). The author of this article goes on to address they why of watching THE show in our world of DVDs, Tivo, and (gasp) teevee on the internets:

"Maybe the furor around shows like Mad Men is not the product of some rampant mass hysteria. Maybe it’s the expression of a yearning for the last remnant of the traditional viewing experience we once shared. Long gone are the days when we would all sit down on Thursday at 10 to watch L.A. Law. So instead, to retain some sense of communal experience, we cling culturally to a single show. We don’t want to admit we’re splitting off in a million directions; we want to believe that all our eyes still occasionally turn in the same direction. (For the past year, the election campaign served this purpose—the one great show we all tuned into.) So it doesn’t even matter that not many people, relatively, are actually watching Mad Men. What matters is that everyone’s talking about it."

The election point is a good one, and this sense of communal experience is exactly why I watch every Monday what maaaaybe might not be one of the best shows ever, Gossip Girl. I know I can rehash the episode with ten people the next day (including my 38-year-old dude office neighbor), read the recaps on Videogum, and feel like I'm part of some big inside joke for a mere 40 min. of DVR time a week. Not to imply that Chuck Bass' fashion choices aren't reason enough to watch.

Thanks, Miss Isadora