So my first A2 column was up on Saturday. If you're in Melbourne or near a cosmopolitan newsagent, or even managed to find it online, hope you read it, and hope even more you enjoyed it.
Writing the column has, quite naturally, led to much thinking on the topic of TV. It's often said that TV is somehow a "deadening" medium, that watching it turns one into a zombie, staring blankly at the screen.
I defy this assertion. Nothing rouses the passions like TV. Nothing stirs the emotions like one's favourite show. No medium is its master in terms of provoking furious debates, declarations and defences. Standing up for the show you love, and lambasting the show you hate, put the lie to the "TV as neural deadener" interpretation.
I myself am passionate not only about the undeniable quality of the shows I like, and by extension the undeniable quality of my good taste, and not only about the undeniable awfulness of the shows I won't watch, and by extension the etc etc, but also about avoiding a certain kind of like-minded fan.
Because possibly the worst thing about being a TV fan is the other fans who claim to love the same show you do, but who are so bafflingly wrongheaded about them, so ignorant of basic facts, and so mind-bogglingly misguided about the motivations of characters and meanings of plotlines, that they drive you into a rope-chewing frenzy every time you log into their forum. A fellow fan with different views is far worse than a hater. Sometimes.
But really, the point is, television is an artform with just as much potential for provoking intense love, hatred and all emotions in between as any other. Although it is important to remember that when you and I disagree about the quality of a show, it is all just a matter of purely subjective opinion.
And your subjective opinion is wrong.
That said, here's a slice of my new possibly-regular blog segment, Thursday Classics:
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