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The election's the best programming on TV In a lackluster pilot season in which we’re forced to grin and bear it as we watch to see if “Opportunity Knocks” for “Kath & Kim” as they face “Life on Mars,” it’s time to applaud the best original programming on television this fall. A linchpin of the reality genre, this serialized drama combines elements of the soap opera into a game-show premise, topped off with a dash of sitcom charm. We’ve seen it many times before in previous incarnations, but never with the kind of tenacious spark and high entertainment value that it has developed over the course of the past few months. “Election ’08,” in all its aspects of coverage and commentary, has quickly become a piece of television gold guaranteed to go down as a defining moment in pop culture history. The election is by far the most talked-about show of the here and now, and for good reason. Of course, we can look at the obvious — it’s time for a change in our country’s leadership, which is always an important and newsworthy event. But with “Election ’08,” political coverage has slowly overtaken virtually every media outlet, from the tired and true pundits to our fuzzy early morning talk-show hosts to the relatively new world of the blogosphere and YouTube. It’s official: “Election ’08” has permeated our collective social reality. But it’s the way that “Election ’08” has come into our lives that is truly fascinating. Like a real-life soap opera, each day introduces new characters (including Sarah Palin, the former beauty queen turned moose-huntin’ hockey mom), plot twists (the abysmal fall of the U.S. economy), and celebrity guest stars (Katie Couric, Kanye West, and of course, Oprah). Though it’s true that you miss out if you miss a moment, don’t worry — you can always catch an animated and dramatic recap featuring the “bias” of your choice on MSNBC or Fox News at your convenience, 24 hours a day. It’s kind of like a “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” way to view “Days of Our Lives” (or maybe even “Passions” if you want to talk about either metaphorical doors to hell or one candidate’s controversial spiritual protectors). Don’t know which side to pick? It’s easy. If our country’s recent love affair with reality TV has taught us anything, it’s that we can choose our political affiliation the same way we choose our favorite “Survivor” castaway — through biography and identification. Or perhaps a *Seventeen*-Style Pop Quiz may help you to “Find Out Which Candidate Is Most Like YOU!!!”: “Are you black? A woman? A member of the military? On a scale of 1 to 10, how patriotic are you? How important, really, is experience? Do you consider yourself a maverick?” See, not hard at all. Essentially, “Election ’08,” with its complex cast of characters and potentially life-altering subject matter, has revitalized television as a whole. You can see it every morning on “The View” as Joy Behar and Elizabeth Hasselbeck find it increasingly more difficult not to murder each other. You saw it a few weeks ago when David Letterman, in what might have been one of the most awesome moments in the history of live TV, bashed John McCain for skipping out on “The Late Show” at the last minute for an interview with Katie Couric (it wasn’t nearly as entertaining when the pair later made nice in part 2). And I can only hope that in Saturday nights following E-Day, you’ll still be able to see Tina Fey’s spot-on Sarah Palin, a caricature that has intellectually elevated “Saturday Night Live” from its recent slump of lowest common denominator “Dick-in-a-Box” jokes. More importantly than what you can see is that people are now actually watching. In a society where political activism in recent elections was dismally low and there are more arguably more technological/social distractions than ever, viewers are continually captivated by Obama, Biden, McCain, and Palin. This includes a whole host of viewers who didn’t even bother to turn on the TV before — me and my once politically apathetic family included. Every morning (after “The View,” of course) I receive a phone call from my mother to give me a “Hot Topics” play-by-play. When I visit my grandmother in the afternoon, I enter the house to hear CNN blaring from both TV in the living room and the set in the adjacent kitchen. On the Thursday evening of the vice-presidential debate, I wandered the streets of downtown Iowa City only to find the bars crowded, not with the usual horde of scantily clad women, but with students and residents fixated to projector screens featuring the debate. As we head into the season finale, I must admit I’m a little disappointed to see the light at the end of a very entertaining tunnel. Though some might criticize this election as being jarred by media hype, I dare to challenge that maybe it’s better this way. Is it a commentary on the state of the American attention span that our political coverage needs to be brought to us like a daytime serial? Perhaps. Is this presentation detrimental to what’s at stake and the issues themselves? Maybe. But at least more people are tuning into to the political game than ever before, and more importantly, at least it isn’t a new spin-off of “Extreme Home Makeover.” |