Television Times This Week

Let me start by saying I’m really loving the idea of the “event series” that has taken the TV world by storm. As technology has intensified, our attention spans seem to have decreased. Gone are the days where 22-24 episodes for a season of a show are what I actually want. Sometimes less is more, and living in a binge-watch society, sometimes the greatest gift a network can give us is something with a short-term obsessibility. Sometimes a quick run of a cohesive and intriguing story that has a concrete beginning, middle, and end is exactly what we need in order to balance the plethora of great television series out there while still maintaining some semblance of a life in the real world.

This is my belief exactly. I want a nice story, like True Detective that I can consume and enjoy in a short period of time. There is no filler to take me out of the story all together. I still have the last four episodes of The Flash in the hopper because I was getting worn out. Same thing happened with The Good Wife this season. Just too much. I have become spoiled by the short 'event' television.

All this week Texas Rising, the story of what happened AFTER the Alamo is running all this week as a five episode mini-series. If I like the first episode I know I will watch all week. The cast looks very solid. Fine character actors all.



These kind of mini-series were extremely popular in the 70s and my family watched them all. North and South, Roots, War and Remembrance, Backstage At The White House, V ect... This was event and appointment television. If you were lucky enough to have a VCR you could tape the episode to watch later but most people didn't get a home video recorder/player until the 80s when the video rental market took off. Nope, you either watched the episode THAT NIGHT or you missed a large chunk of the story and then wanted to kill yourself. You kids have no idea how great you have it today.

I especially remember how crazy we kids all got that week that V ran it's initial 'event'. Everyone was caught up in the story and the school yard was abuzz with talk of those stinking lizard aliens after each episode was aired. We ALL watched it. If you didn't you were almost an outcast.