I know it's been six months since I mentioned this topic, but that's only because I'm don't pay any more attention to what I say here than you do. And also I'd have gotten back to this Minibest sooner except I try as hard as I can to avoid ever hearing anything about Mad Men whatsoever -- not because Jon Hamm's a liar but because when a television show (or anything) is superpopular it can only mean that it sucks.
Don't bother trying to correct me. In our modern era (post 2005), the more popular something is, the more terrible it is. It used to be that something being really popular meant it was good, but somewhere between Titanic and the last Harry Potter book, that ended. Now, as a general rule, with the exception of McDonald's cheeseburgers, superpopular generally means supersuckage.
I believe it's because it's no longer possible to distinguish genuine popularity from fake popularity. Popularity is, after all, determined by only a few factors: how much money something made and how highly it is rated and how much people are talking about it.
But money stopped being a measure when I (and you and we all) stopped being able to factor in inflation. Every movie is a record-setter; Shrek 2 made more money than E.T. So The Hunger Games made a jintillion dollars over the weekend; so what? Movie theater box office receipts are simply a Hollywood version of the Weimar Republic.
Then there's ratings -- which are so easily manipulated that Oprah could ask her viewers to rate her show higher.
Finally, there's how much people are talking about it. That used to be a reliable measure -- it's what got me to see Titanic and it's what two years ago proposed as a true measure of greatness. It seemed to me that was a good way to check things out, but I hadn't yet at that time worked out the logistics of the echo chamber that is the Internet and modern media -- where one paparazzi photo can show up on 50 celebrity blogs, where the Huffington Post will headline a story from another site which copied it from the New York Times, where, in essence, there are 33,000,000 Google results for even the most obscure topic.
For example: I just googled "robot who played checkers" and found nearly 6,000,000 sites.
So if it seems a lot of people are talking about something like Mad Men or The Hunger Games or that one show that George R.R. Martin made by taking all the boring parts of Lord Of The Rings and altering them to include more dwarves, it's as likely to be just the reverberations of a single original voice or a small contingent of voices as it is to really be a crowd at the water cooler, and that's fueled my natural suspicion of anything popular, a suspicion that was originally created by high school (where I was unpopular, as you've guessed/been told over and over.)
Which, in turn, is why it took me so long to realize that January Jones plays a mom on Mad Men,
but once I did learn that, I wasted no time in making her number three on this list.
Previously, On The Eight Hottest Moms (Currently) On TV Shows:
1. Allana Harkin
2. Sophia Vergara
3 comments:
I watched the first episode of "Mad Men" and all it told me was that everyone was going to sleep with everyone else. Yawn. I mean I guess if you like soap operas then it's fine but I don't really care.
I Tweeted the other day that between Tim Tebow and Twilight we seem to love mediocrity. That should really piss all the Ayn Randians off, though they'd probably blame Obama and "big government" for it. I mean why are all these people psyched about a mediocre quarterback coming to their city to hold a clipboard? Just because he won a few games in a shitty division? Because thanks to wacky playoff seeding they beat a banged-up Pittsburgh team? Come on, I think Lions backup quarterback Shaun Hill as won as many games as Tebow and no one's holding press conferences for him. And I'm sure he's a Christian too. I guess part of it is people like Offutt just think Tebow's sexy.
As for Twilight, OMG what a piece of shit! It's so fucking slow and boring. She just glossed over the big vampire fight even! And that Bella chick is such a whiny wet blanket I'd tear her throat out and I'm not a vampire!
And you're right about how money is so misleading. Well sure "Avatar" made more money than "Titanic" but that's also because tickets (especially with 3D) were more expensive 12 years later. If we went just by number of tickets sold something like "Gone With the Wind" would probably still be #1 because back then movies were only a nickel and they'd include a whooping to keep your mind on your business.
I get annoyed when networks advertize a new show as the stand-out hit of the season when the show hasn't even premiered yet. What a big lie! How can it be such a huge success if only a few people in the production and advertising departments have seen it?
I'm always wary of what's popular. Occassionally, it turns out to be something good but not usually.
My wife really likes Mad Men. I will say it's an interesting show. It's not my favorite, but it's fairly entertaining. Jones plays a major ice queen.
@Grumpy: Gone with the Wind was the #1 for a really long time based on actual seats sold, not money. A New Hope passed it, maybe, 10 years ago? I don't remember when. Before Special Edition came out, though, I think.
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