5 TV Shows for Today's Great Recession
From zombies attacks to scheming bar owners, these shows reflect today's climate of fear and loathing
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3. Kitchen Nightmares
The same concept applies to Fox’s Kitchen Nightmares, a British transplant starring foul-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey, who spends each episode knocking some sense into fledgling restaurant owners. In a refreshing twist, the show presents a side of the U.S. economy often overlooked in the recession narrative: the burgeoning and thriving world of delicious food. And whether or not each restaurant highlighted on the show ends up as viable businesses, the very fact that a given restaurant might fail is something to celebrate. The high closure rate featured on Kitchen Nightmares is an example of capitalism's genius for creative destruction. The entrepreneurs that failed will either try again and succeed or be replaced by a business that can deliver the goods.
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Well, there's Hulk S*M*A*S*H, starring Alan Alda.
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Robot Chicken's still on?
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What, no love for "Nurse Whatshername"? Drug WARZOMG!, escapist behavior, broken marriage, shady characters of suspect lineage - it's got it all!
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No nudity. I expected more from Showtime.
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Of course, none of those 5 shows are in the top 10 rated network or cable shows. What are in the top 10 are singing/dancing competitions (American Idol) and crime scene dramas (NCIS-whatever) and a stupid sitcom (Big bang Theory). In cable it's almost all sports (and spongebob apparently.
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Pro Wrestling still does well.
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Are all black people gay?
Prime Broadcast Programs Among African-Americans - United States
Week of May 7, 2012
Rank Program Network Rating Viewers (000)
1 SCANDAL ABC 10.7 1,812
2 DANCING WITH THE STARS ABC 10.2 1,959
3 AMERICAN IDOL-WEDNESDAY FOX 8.8 1,687
4 AMERICAN IDOL-THURSDAY FOX 8.0 1,547
5 DANCING W/STARS RESULTS ABC 7.9 1,425Not that there is anything wrong with that.
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7 BIG BANG THEORY, THE CBS 8.2 13,717
I wonder how this show fits into Charles Murray's thesis about class in America.
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I saw an episode of Storage Wars once. Can't say I've seen any of the rest of those shows.I'll stick with TCM.
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No love for South Park's banking episode, with everyone going into debt to buy the margarita machines?
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Nobody can possibly know what this margarita machine is worth!
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Robot Chicken, like Family Guy, is only good when it isn't being all preachy and up it's own ass. They should stick to what they're good at: stupid.
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Those are two shows I consistently fail to get the appeal of.
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me too
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Anybody else think that Archer is fairly libertarian?
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How so?
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rife with depictions of (quasi-)govt incompetence for one, a limited-govt staple.
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I love Archer, but if anything it depicts a failure of privatization. Not very libertarian.
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Is that based on the Dashiell Hammett character who gets killed quickly?
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I really liked Sealab 2021, at least for the first season or so. ATHF is hit or miss (though the terrorist nonsense they caused up in Boston is wonderful). Never seen Archer, do you suppose I'd like?
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If you're a snark fan, you will not be disappointed.
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One of the guys from Sealab and Frisky Dingo came up with Archer.
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Sorry, this smacks of liberalism in sense of the personal is the political. Not everything needs to go back to ideology. I just need to know if the show is entertaining.
Winter is coming.
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I felt the same way until I read Ed's final sentence. I could be wrong, but I think he's making a point out of making a point.
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Slideshows suck. EOM
(see how i fit my message into as little space as possible?)
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So, it requires bad economic times to produce watchable entertainment.
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Metalocalypse season 4.
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I wanna keep the New Deal.
I don't want the Old Deal...it sucked...at least for me.
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Fine. We create two tax and welfare systems. One is the tax code from 1876, the other is the tax code from 1976. If you chose the "Gilded Age" tax code, you get the benefits of the era. Same thing with the Disco Era taxes and welfare.
Let's see which works out better.
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You're a rich white man?
Cause those are the only people that have been helped by the New Deal.
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Exactly how old were you when the old deal was replaced by the new deal ?
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Couldn't work Breaking Bad in there somehow?
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I watch Storage Wars for the sole misguided hope that Brandy's talent will be exposed.
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I'm still waiting for the anarcho-capitalist paradise of SeaLabia.
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All those show suck sweaty balls. Save Storage Wars, it was good for one season.
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GAME OF THRONES BITCHES!!!!
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LaLa's Full Court Life. Another sports show.
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The Walking Dead, based on a zombie comic of the same name, became one of the most successful cable shows in history when its second season http://www.nikewinkel.com/scho.....-c-49.html premiere broke cable ratings records last year with an audience of more than 7 million.
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Arrested Development in both title and theme of crooked real estate deals in south Orange County seems to me the best encapsulation of the economy.
These Adult swim shows that can't stay coherent in their *10 minute* time frame are a sign of the apocalypse, I'm sure of it.
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6. Mad Men.
Unconcealed nostalgia for American economic power at its apex, along with the culture (for good and bad) as it stood before the PC reign of terror began.
Provides a depressing contrast to the society we live in today.