TVnasty

Since I got into the TV blogging business I've fielded many questions in cars, coffee shops and chat rooms about why anyone in their right mind would want to get into the sordid world of infrequently updated posts on reality TV and quirky cult wonders with sapphic subtexts. Truth is the world's not all that sordid - mostly just exasperating and overrun by loud chicks who spend commercial breaks bedazzling their mouse pads.

Take, for instance, Exhibit number A. The TVnista blog at TVguide.com. From what I gather from her posts, she's 25. How do I know this? Because her favorite show until this year was A Different World. Now, it's The Wire. Seriously. And what makes this Quarter-Lifer worth listening to when it comes to analysis and critique of mass media? Obviously her uncanny ability to feign total retardation as well as regurgitate shit she's read elsewhere to affect an aura of, "I know what the fuck I'm talking about."

TVnista on "The Best Returning Show of the Season: The Wire"

This gritty drama makes you flinch, but for good reasons, by turning a camera on the urban realities so many people live in quiet desperation. Often I have to pinch myself to remind myself that I’m not watching a documentary, but instead, a work of fiction.

Ah yes, what would a review of The Wire be without a totally unnecessary and unoriginal allusion to a classic piece of literature. Do me a favor and don't tell TVnista that The Wire actually developed out of the HBO miniseries "The Corner," a veritable documentary of what David Simon saw as a beat reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

TVnista goes on to list her second favorite "Breakout Hit of the Season: Friday Night Lights." And here, friends, is why I got into the TV blogging bidness. Because comments like this:

Here’s another show, like The Wire, that can often feel like a documentary. It does have a film-like quality, but I could do without the shaky camera. It makes me a bit nauseous.

...by people like TVnista, in this age of YOU are the PERSON of the Year, may actually have some sort of affect on the shows normal people reasonably enjoy. New Media may be the future but it also threatens to dismantle the institutions we have, over the years, come to embrace as immutable. Yeah, I got into the TV Blog scene mostly to score a free Lost t-shirt, but what started as a campaign for J.J. Abrams e-bay fodder has become an (j)E-had for taking TV back from the TVnistas, starting in the nearest car, coffee shop and chat room I can find.