Television – Lemmon Avenue

Photo: NBC ©

Earlier this week I opened my copy of Rolling Stone’s newest October issue. Full disclosure I have been a reader for many years and a subscriber only in recently. Amidst the controversies that various articles have caused I’ve continued to read because I love music, and I like that I have kept up with this tradition of reading Rolling Stone since my preteen years.

So when I saw the cover, a crowded image of several popular TV show characters, it quickly grabbed my attention and headed straight to the article. Slowly I read through a few, several shows I recognized from having been a viewer, other older shows I recognized by name as well as recent shows that are popular now but don’t currently watch. I finished going through the list and found that one particular ultimately very popular show was missing. My first thought was ‘well not every show can be on this list’. Seriously. There are far too many shows that are too good and that did not make the list. Maybe these particular absent shows are not as mainstream as other shows, did not have a long-run on tv, or maybe those shows were ignored because the people who made this list were being biased AF. The show in question falls more in the latter category.

Family Guy was the show that stood out like a sore thumb as NOT making this list. You might think, well it’s just not good enough for the list. See that’s where you’re wrong because at the end of the article the deciders of the massive list are listed. Many of them Rolling Stone staff as well as 52 creators , writers, producers and actors of the very shows on the list. Yup. Among them actors and show runners that did not make the list, but still doesn’t it seem like a very biased and not a true definition of ‘The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time’?

Perhaps it was a way to throw shade at Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. We cannot dispute that over the years South Park creators have made their dislike for Macfarlane fairly obvious and Rolling Stone magazine even published an interview with MacFarlane in 2012 where he was asked about it. In 2015 Rolling Stone again published an article titled ‘Hating Seth MacFarlane: A Timeline’ where they chronicle his career from the beginning until today as well as the reasons as to why people in the business don’t like him. You know who did make the list? South Park. Why didn’t they have readers involved in choosing the top shows after all we are the majority of viewers.

Recognize talent when you see it. Leave all of those personal issues with MacFarlane behind. So the guy is successful, but he’s got talent that the industry fails to recognize often. His show comes off as rude and inappropriate to a lot of people. So what? All shows will have something somebody will not like. I’m not going to say that I’ve never been insulted from some of the things that come up in Family Guy, but guess what it has created conversation among friends who also watch the show. I continue to watch because it’s funny and real. It motivates the viewers to feel, think, and talk about issues that affect us everyday. So don’t dislike a guy because he’s successful in more ways than one or because he writes about the real issues of today with the cocky honesty that we don’t want to hear but so desperately need to.

Advertisements

Photo: Netflix

Have you heard? Our beloved Gilmore Girls will be back this fall most likely in November. If you have no idea what a Gilmore Girl is I suggest you find out…like right now! I assure you that if you haven’t already heard it was THE show of the early 2000s.

Back then I was in the 5th grade of my small school and I unlike many my age passed the time just like Rory Gilmore: I read, I read and wrote, I wrote and read. Good times. Nowadays, after a long journey searching for what was right in front of me all along. I write. I write and read, I read and write. Maybe it was the Rory phantom that subconsciously inspired me to be a writer. Maybe. Although I think I was already there by the time the show aired. But that’s a post for another day.

In the beginning it was clear that the two main characters, a mother-daughter duo, were both inseparable as well as rightfully so very different in many ways. Their differences created dynamic complexities in both their development as characters in a story which only highlighted their likeness to each other. The ins and outs of their characters resonated in audiences because they had choices. Having a choice is a powerful thing, for anyone, you don’t need to be a Gilmore.

But back then in the fall of 2000 having a voice and making a choice was our biggest concern and aspiration. We were done with the whole Y2K scare, I remember packing a small backpack with my nearest and dearest possessions, yet I shudder to think that now under different circumstances living in a post-apocalyptic world is quite possible. Growing up Gilmore, I think gave my generation, generation Y, a little something to dream of. A little more than dreaming of living comfortably in a cute and small town where your neighbors are actually neighborly. The ability to think that our mom could also be our friend and that our relationship especially with our family is not the one we imagine it to be because of our ancestry but the one we make of it from our love and experiences we share.

Growing up Gilmore gave us the ability to set our minds to plan and achieve our goals. A la Buzzlightyear : “Reach for the sky”. We should be reaching for the sky. We should be doing something that we are yearning. Watching the show again (hey I gots to refresh for the Netflix revival) and introducing it to my youngest niece, the eldest falling completely in love with it, has reminded me of the things our society lost since the show aired and since it ended. Think about all the events that have happened, the inventions and discoveries, the turmoil and the peaceful worldly news between 2000-2007 and 2007-2016, that’s a lot. As the years went by our voices got louder and people are listening. Year by year each graduating class of high school or college is getting smarter, faster and stronger one can only wonder how many of us watched and noted the Gilmore way.

Stay Netflixed.

Lemmon Avenue

Category: Television

About Rolling Stone’s Top 100 Shows

Attraction of the Gilmore Girls