It has come to my attention that Chuck Lorre, creator of TV shows like Two & A Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, has a new turd he's been polishing for market: a sitcom called The United States of Al.
The premise of this alleged comedy is that a veteran of the US war in Afghanistan brings his native interpreter home to live with him in America. You know, like he found a frog at the creek and snuck it back to the dinner table. The Afghan interpreter, named "Al", moves in with the American soldier's family, where his... hilarious... Afghan ways lead to heartwarming hijinks. Or something.
I apologize for putting you through this, but just watch the trailer.
I'm trying to decide if I could come up with a more asinine premise for a TV show. Let's try this: "Brokelahoma": 20-something female hipsters navigate sex, dating, and friendship in 2021 Tulsa.
No, that's too good. HBO would buy that. Let's aim lower: "Pheasant Finders: Orlando" - Three men and a deaf basset hound search Central Florida for the ultimate pheasant."
Okay, I'm still not aiming low enough. I feel like Pheasant Finders: Orlando could be on the Discovery Channel tomorrow. Maybe I'm too good at coming up with shows. Or, more to the point, it seems like networks have become unbelievably bad at it. The United States of Al? Really? This is a prime time network show that's somehow even more childish and unbelievable than Dog With a Blog:
I would watch a thousand dogs with a blogs before I'd tune into The United States of Al. At least I like dogs, and I own a blog that's named after my dog.
Al, meanwhile, is just a lazy gimmick that's already been explored in sitcoms of yesteryear like Perfect Strangers or Alf. This is a well-worn trope: "average Americans adopt a foreigner, and isn't that funny?"
The United States of Al may seem like something put together by a bunch of out-of-touch white people trying to score diversity points. But that's not actually the case - its primary writer and producer is Reza Aslan, famed Iranian-American religious scholar and cultural gadfly. Aslan's stated goal with Al is to have a friendly, welcoming Muslim protagonist on American TV to help reshape the country's warped perception of Islamic culture.
An admirable aim in my opinion, but here's where he went wrong - while describing his efforts to shop Al to various producers, Aslan says he "knew that... Chuck (Lorre) would be the kind of person who could take very heavy topics like immigration and xenophobia and transform them into something entertaining and palatable, but without necessarily taking the edge away."
Oh, really? Tell me, Mr. Aslan, which episode of Two and a Half Men gave you the impression that Chuck Lorre would be an excellent custodian of "heavy topics"? Which episode of Big Bang Theory made you call your agent and say "I think I've found the man who can tell my tale of immigration and xenophobia"?
Reza Aslan has never been a great thinker to begin with. In his other career as a religious apologist, he famously opined that atheists have no right to criticize religion because they are not themselves religious scholars, and therefore haven't done "the research". In other words, he doesn't think anyone can be an atheist until they've attended a seminary, graduated from a madrasa, or become a professional rabbi - then and only then can someone weigh in on whether god is real.
Without diving too deep into that sinkhole, let me briefly say to Mr. Aslan that one doesn't need to own all of the Pokemon cards to know the little bastards aren't real. In other words, your hard-won expertise on a piece of fiction doesn't turn it into reality, no matter how many hours you've pored over the material. But, if you feel deeply that it does, the burden of proof is on you, not me. So research away, my friend. I'll be making a mojito.
The Science of Shitcoms
So we have our cliche idea for a TV show, a religious scholar as our comedy writer (those guys are notorious cut-ups), and an executive producer known for anything but nuanced and challenging television. Are these the reasons this show is going to suck?
Primarily. But the problem here is beyond just a stupid premise and poor talent. It's the fact that people are still making and watching sitcoms to begin with. Can you think of anything more tired, dated, hackneyed, lame, or unwatchable than a 90s-style studio audience sitcom? I can't.
The laugh tracks. The multi-camera coverage. The crappy, un-lived in look of the sets. The awkward timing of dialogue and delivery, built to make room for those fake laughs. In many sitcoms there aren't even actual jokes - the only thing indicating something humorous is taking place is when an actor pauses after speaking. This pause, of course, is where that laugh track goes, and it's only because we hear laughter that our brains understand something funny is supposed to be happening. Watch this clip of The Big Bang Theory with the laugh track removed.
Without the canned laughs, this scene comes off like a computer trying to approximate human behavior. It's stilted, awkward, unrealistic, and profoundly unfunny. But that show was a monster hit for CBS, just like Two & A Half Men. In the modern era, with multiple streaming platforms and incredible scripted series being churned out by the hundreds... why would somebody watch this lazy drivel?
This is decidedly low-grade fodder, even for Americans. I would rather watch an amateur Youtube channel where a Russian grandmother teaches me to knit. (I looked it up after writing that sentence and yes, it does exist).
Yet I suppose we can't be that surprised that people are watching this garbage. For decades running, cable television has been awash in low-brow shows about lumber workers, truckers, bachelorettes, wolf-people, pregnant teenagers, and angry men yelling. So why not a three-camera sitcom about a quirky group of friends who all pause for several seconds after every declarative sentence?
Our Parents Warned Us About This
When I was a kid in the late 80s and early 90s, my parents used to limit my TV time, because there was a popular theory going around that watching too much TV made you stupid. Only "vidiots" and "couch potatoes" spent their time glued to the TV, which was considered entertaining but low rent, like smoking crack and masturbating in your car. Television was slumming it, essentially.
Back then, actors who made their living in TV could never dream of working on a feature film. It just wasn't done - it would have been like a porn star making the same leap. TV was pure trash, cinema was the big leagues, and they were not allowed to mix. But today this concept no longer exists; actors, actresses, producers, and directors all move between cinema and television with virtually no friction at all.
It took a few decades, but so much of the old bias against television has vanished. People love their TV shows, and unashamedly watch them to the extent that movie theaters are struggling to even compete. How the tables have turned! And today the idea that TV makes you stupid is widely regarded as a stuffy old wive's tale.
Well I hate to say it, but I think the old wives were right. TV does turn you into an idiot - at least the traditional, commercial-supported form of it. And I'm happy to explain this to you, dear reader.
Sit Down and Shut Up
I think the biggest case against TV is that it's passive by nature. The medium is not intended to be thought-provoking or stimulating, it's supposed to be broad entertainment that is easily digestible by even the stupidest of people, so that it can reach the largest possible audience. And a larger audience is always the goal, because more eyeballs means more money from advertisers. This is the only goal of ad-driven TV - making as much money as possible. This isn't inherently bad, it's a business, after all. But it does mean that whatever show you're watching is nothing more than expensive bait to lure you into viewing an insurance commercial.
To understand how this works is to understand that things must necessarily be dumbed down in order to make air. Anything that is potentially educational, interesting, high-brow, thoughtful, clever, or niche is not in the interest of broadcast companies, because these things alienate large swathes of viewers, which in turn drives down ad revenue. It is for precisely this reason that we see things like The United States of Al on network TV. It's just pure vomit that even someone who's been kicked in the head by a mule can watch and understand.
To be fair to Al, any sitcom in production at a major network is destined to be savaged by the forces of corporate risk aversion. Anything edgy or offensive will be removed to keep advertisers safe from controversy. Any content perceived as "too difficult" or "over people's heads" must be cut as well, because the audience might feel stupid and watch something else. In essence, the viewer is treated like an idiot, incapable of perceiving nuance and always one joke away from being permanently offended.
For these reasons, my argument is that ad-driven television is by definition made for idiots, and anyone who spends their time ingesting it is bound to become one themselves. After all, you are what you eat, and if your mental diet is Young Sheldon, Ice Road Truckers, and Fox News, you're not doing much for your brain.
My favorite example of what advertisement-driven television can do to a network is TLC, which at some point stood for "The Learning Channel". TLC was founded in 1972 as a joint project between the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA in order to provide educational programming that focused on nature, science, space, and technology. I'm old enough to remember when TLC still produced this type of content.
But in the 1990s, The Discovery Channel bought TLC, and the network was fully privatized. Away went the documentaries about cheetahs and astronauts, and in came a steady diet of proto-reality television, a virus which slowly consumed the network until today TLC is, more or less, the freak show network. The channel's most prominent "hits" are shows like My 600 lbs Life and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.
This is what happens when private industry gets its hooks into a good thing. Observe.
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Learning Channel.
Mama June shares her famous recipe for a dish called "sketti".
It's almost impossible to picture someone who indulges in this form of entertainment remaining intelligent for long, because the media they are engaging with is pulling them in the opposite direction. There's a saying in the business world - "you're either growing or you're shrinking". This applies to your brain. What you feed it has a direct impact on what it becomes. It's the reason seemingly normal people can sit down in front of Fox News for a few years and come out the other end wholly unrecognizable to their own families. They have literally been made stupider by TV.
Once you see television in this harsh light, it becomes difficult to justify spending your precious time on it. This should be obvious, but ad-driven TV is nothing more than a trick to get people to buy things. It's not there to be artistic, thought-provoking, or act as a cultural vanguard on the big issues, much as Reza Aslan may wish it to be so. If those qualities do apply to a TV show, it is nearly always by accident, or because some subversive in the corporate structure has allowed a show's creators to run wild. These are wonderful accidents, but they are not the norm, and the system is not designed to encourage this.
The Exceptions
But not all TV makes you stupid. There is a stark difference in quality between subscription services like Netflix or HBO and their counterparts in broadcast TV, which is ad-supported and live-to-air. Subscription networks have better quality programming because their business models rely on having a large menu of high-quality shows for different tastes, all available just... whenever you want them, man.
In this model, viewers can watch any show on demand, so having an entire series dedicated to cake decorating doesn't necessarily mean the company is losing viewers who want to watch period dramas. Those viewers can just click on the period drama they want to watch and be satisfied. These subscription outlets aren't worried about time slots, pleasing advertisers, or losing eyeballs to something with broader appeal. As long as people have enough of their preferred content being produced, they'll keep paying for the service.
Similarly, cable networks are sometimes able to produce passable content because their mandate is to be niche to begin with. Nobody is surprised when they turn on Comedy Central and find rude comedy - and advertisers who do business with them know this and are comfortable with it. The viewer is ready for crass content the minute they turn that channel on, thus we can have something like South Park slip through the corporate cracks and become incredible, despite the usual hurdles of having to please advertisers.
Networks like CBS and ABC, however, broadcast their content over the airwaves, which means the viewer must catch the content in real time (as opposed to "on demand"). They are forced to dumb down the programming, hoping the inoffensive, broad appeal of their shlock will bring in a sizable audience they can sodomize with an Allstate commercial. Are you in good hands? I was before you stuck that advertisement up my ass, thank you very much.
So considering the "one-size-fits-all" model of network TV shows, it should come as no surprise that this is exactly the swamp we find The United States of Al floating in. Because I am thoroughly convinced no one would subscribe to it, given the choice.
Conclusion
I think I've made my point about why these shows are produced. What I still can't figure out, however, is why they are consumed. The attention economy being as competitive as it is, it blows my mind that anyone is interested in watching this stuff. And yet they do.
Which leads me to a sort of Occam's Razor solution, one that can solve many of life's mysteries: people are just stupid. As George Carlin famously quipped, "Think about how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
Chuck Lorre sitcoms are easy, low-energy, bland, humorless, rote, flat, lazy, pre-chewed, repetitive, and stupid. But the audience doesn't care because they've been conditioned to eat whatever trash is tossed their way by a television. I think that's our answer here, we're like wild animals who have been fed by campers and forgotten how to hunt for ourselves. We can no longer differentiate between good and bad, we just do what the TV tells us.
And even as I conclude this article, I'm reading more and more about the severe backlash against The United States of Al of which it seems I am now a part. A lot of people are upset about the racial patronizing, or the casting of a South African Indian actor as an Afghan, or any other number of valid criticisms. I, personally, am just annoyed at how stupid it is. My favorite criticism is from a writer named Rekha Shankar, who tweeted: "Can someone tell Chuck Lorre that 'what if a white person liked a brown person' is not a tv show concept?"
Yes. And maybe tell TLC that "fat people existing" doesn't cut the mustard, either. Or people driving on icy roads, or baptist ministers grifting in the south, or anything else we see on TV.
You know what? There's no fix here. TV is a wasteland. Just unplug.
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