Pop Vultures

Something rather unexpected has happened recently. I’m not enjoying TV as much. I’m sure it’s just a phase; you can’t keep a good couch potato down for long. However, as the post-strike episodes begin to trickle onto the airwaves, I find myself with the same response over and over again: yawn.

After waiting months for The Office to return, it does so with an episode set almost entirely in Michael’s condo, and while the episode contained all the awkward, borderline painful humor we’ve come to expect, it didn’t include the supporting characters that make the show so perfect. It’s been months — couldn’t they let us know how Stanley is doing? It didn’t help that the episode focused too much on Jan, since my one issue with the show is the way they’ve assassinated her character.

What about How I Met Your Mother? It came back with a much-heralded guest appearance by a certain pop starlet with mental heath issues, but hasn’t felt newsworthy otherwise. Part of the show’s charm comes from the lunatic convergence of multiple plots, and recent episodes have only had one predictable story to tell. Barney deserves better, damn it.

Granted, it can’t be easy to get back into the writing groove after months of walking the picket lines, but something feels off on so many shows, and I’m not sure whether it’s because the writers are out of practice writing or I’m out of practice viewing. After all, there are plenty of shows that weren’t affected by the strike that still haven’t been very good.

Men in Trees had all of its episodes filmed long before the strike, and it’s still boring me senseless. Sure, the show is a light-hearted character drama, but shouldn’t it contain some basic signs of a plot? I’m not asking for much, just enough so I can remember what happened the next day. At the moment, the only thing I’m sure of is that some new hockey player is in town and someone else still has amnesia. If it wasn’t for the fact that it feeds my longtime fantasy of living in a mountain cabin in Alaska, I’m not sure I’d be tuning in at all.

Then there’s Ashes to Ashes, a show I was downright giddy to see premiere and then quickly forgot about. Even the divine presence of Gene Hunt couldn’t hold my attention from the self-conscious and soulless depiction of the 80s. I found myself actually forgetting to watch it when it aired and eventually even stopped catching up on the BBC iPlayer. So far as I know, Alex Drake is forever trapped in 1983. She may never get to hear the Purple Rain soundtrack, in that case, a far crueler fate than being forced to relive the fashion.

Honestly, if it wasn’t for Battlestar Galactica, a show that is so damn good I want to tongue-kiss everyone who makes it, I’d worry that I was bored with television. That can’t be, can it? It’s got to be just a phase, one that will certainly end this month with the return of Gossip Girl, Ugly Betty and Supernatural, right? I’ll get my fabulous characters and stories back, and won’t have to resort to any desperate measures like, you know, getting off the sofa.

What about you? Are you enjoying the return of scripted television, or are you finding it hard to get back into the swing of things?