I Am a Critically Acclaimed Cable Television Drama
I am a critically acclaimed cable television drama that airs Sundays at 9 and you can watch me if you want, but it doesn’t really matter—over the last half-decade I have amassed a viewership so large and loyal that your decision not to watch me won’t affect my lucrative advertising deal with Friday’s, where for the next six months you can order a side Caesar salad shaped like my Emmy-winning protagonist’s head. And yet you probably should watch me. Soon enough those critically-acclaimed-drama-starved pigeons you call your friends and co-workers will be discussing my unexpected plot twists and turns and you will either feel more alienated than you usually do or will cover your ears, having promised yourself two seasons ago that you’d indulge in my feast of clever characterization and near-Kubrickian cinematography (but then again how many promises to yourself have you broken? What became of that Library of America Henry James volume gathering dust on the seat of the unused treadmill you inherited from your late father, who in his dying days begged you to take care of the now-impounded-or-most-likely-dead dog that made his final years so worth living? No, better to uncover those ears, to let my storylines flow into you devoid of context and sensuous camerawork, like the elixir that will once and for all kill that part of your brain that still cares about things like me). I will be aired in syndication and streamed on Netflix long after your death, and unlike the pathetic relics of your quiet, unfulfilled existence I will provide illumination and insight to people all over the world. When I finally come to my ambiguous-yet-wholly-satisying conclusion, television critics who wanted to be jazz musicians or astronauts will write thousand-word think-pieces that will link me to seminal, non-telvisual works of fiction and that, collected and bound, will dwarf your obituary, a 57-word scrawl reluctantly paid for by the child you made it your life’s mission to disappoint.
