Over this past weekend I was horrible sick with what was probably the "stomach flu". My wife is now. I'll write more on that latter.
Anyhow, I woke up in a bad state (I'll spare the details) and spent most of the weekend on the sofa, falling asleep.
A lost weekend.
Anyhow, my wife had Dawson's Creek on, which was on as one of the major actors, James Van Der Beek recently tragically died of colon cancer, something I relatively recently dodged the bullet on myself. FWIW, quite a few actors who were on the series have passed away, although he's the youngest (although barely so) to do so. It was a tragic death.
Dawson's Creek sucks.
The question would be why I put it up here at all, and I don't have that much of a good reason, but it reminds me of how television shows featuring teenagers of recent years fit a pattern. The other one is One Tree Hill.
Their nighttime soap operas, but they're bad, and at worst, perverted.
All the characters, even the supposedly poor ones, are fantastically wealthy living in really good conditions. They have nearly unlimited access to wealth that most middle class families in the real world struggle for and their lives are more or less unhindered by their parents, who are portrayed as a sort of older siblings, even in their appearance. Nobody in this world has been worn down by age and responsibilities. They're all beautiful. There's now an ugly duckling girls or awkward boy amongst them. Their entire lives involve endless love triangles, and at least in Dawson's Creek's case, statutory rape. They're maudlin in the extreme.
All in all, they're a really weird look at the teenage years of Americans, and its weirder than people want to look back at teenagers that way. It says something about our society, and not in a good way. That millions of adults would follow a series that deals, at least in part, with sexual encounters of minors, is weird. Dramas, and comedies, focusing on youth have always been a thing, but not ones that focus on youth as well funded adults lusting or longing for each other.
As a complaint about television scripts, I suppose, it's interesting that television likes to keep a couple that should obviously be a couple nearly being a couple for years, and then conclude with them not being a couple. This can be a legitimate dramatic element, as in the Western drama Wil Penny, but if its going to be done it ought to serve some purpose. In television dramas, it simply tends not to. The Wonder Years, well worth watching, provides another example.
On material details, this is set on the Eastern Seaboard which I don't know much about, but nearly 100% of the people depicted are white, which I don't think realistic. Maybe my view of the Eastern Seaboard is off, however. Made when it was, an obligatory sympathetically portrayed homosexual couple is included.
Anyhow, just skip this and watch 5-25-77 instead.
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