"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners."

^Johnny Carson

As discussed in my last blog post, I graduated recently. So, naturally, I'm mostly unemployed.

It's hard to be profound when you spend most of your day staring at the television, which is why it's been pretty quiet around here, but I've decided to turn that to my advantage. If I can't be employed in television (yet!), I can at least write about it.

Let me just say this now: I. Love. Television. Kenneth Parcell is my spirit animal. I am so excited that TV is making such a brilliant comeback. The line between TV and film is blurring; people expect high-quality entertainment even on the smallest of small screens. People aren't willing to make that television concession anymore: "It's pretty good for TV." Increasingly, there's no such thing as a "TV actor" vs. a "movie actor." Shows like Breaking Bad, Hannibal, even New Girl, are pushing television cinematic quality beyond anything anyone has ever expected from television before. Sure, there's absolute garbage on TV. But that goes for anything, at any time.

One of the most amazing things about the Internet is that I can experience television from every decade. I can travel to the beginning of television and see where the traditions come from. I can watch things that my parents grew up with. I can watch things that I remember being on but was too young to watch at the time. I can watch things that were on last month or last week or yesterday.

So, rather than let this blog sit and rot along with my lazy, unemployed brain, I thought, why not put my television expertise to use and use my excessive viewership to do something useful?

I want to write about my experiences with television of days past. Everybody writes about what's on now, but I want to share my journey through the history of television. Who says the Internet can't be educational?

Now, I have a theory that TV series--whether comedy or drama--that have continuing plot lines should never last longer than five seasons. In my experience, anything longer than this inevitably leads to flat, one-dimensional caricatures of what used to be really interesting characters and boring, circular, or even ridiculous plotlines. They either dissolve into a dull mush or jump the shark, just like Fonzie.

While I'm already watching, we'll test that theory a little more thoroughly. So far I'm right, with very few exceptions.

One of those exceptions is the subject of the first real post (coming... soon-ish?), but we'll let it be a surprise.

Until whenever soon-ish is, you can bet I'll be on Netflix and/or Amazon.

(I'm aware that my blog title is less than apropos for this particular project. But it's been such a long time since I made this blog that I've kind of grown attached to this title, so we'll deal with it.)