Whatever Happened to Great Action TV Shows? (A-Team, Knight Rider, The Fall Guy, etc)

Cafe Society
21

Many recent action shows overplay their own importance, trying to cash in on that big “secret government conspiracy” crap (i.e. Alias, Dark Angel, 24, Roswell, even Buffy to some degree).

They crowded out all the mindless but entertaining Robin Hood-style stuff where the gunfights and car chases and whatnot were just the hero(es) going through his/their normal search for justice (MacGyver, The Equalizer, The A-Team, Stingray, Spencer for Hire, A Man Called Hawk etc.) Birds of Prey tried to revitalize the action hero genre, (Smallville is a bit too cerebral to count as an action show per se) but the current appetite is for conspiracy stories, and the networks follow the money. I’m hoping the genre dies soon, as I’m sick of it, but threads in GD about Bush knowing about, encouraging and/or orchestrating Sept. 11 tell me there will always be a market for this kind of hooey.

22

Wow, Bryan. I’ve sat through a couple of eps of Smallville (my hubby likes it) and cerebral is among the last words I’d use to describe that show!

23

Well, I said a “bit” too cerebral, by which I meant all the expositional crap involving Lex and his father and whatnot.

Okay, you got me, “cerebral” isn’t the word. “Soap-opery” might be closer to the mark.

24

Such a splendid post and sterling observation … all utterly marred by leaving out the most notorious example of them all.

The X Files

Never in my life have I seen a show so well stocked, to the point of being overloaded, with self importance.

25

Ah, but X-Files was only intermittently an action show, and invoking it invites a chicken-and-egg argument:

Is the current crop of conspiracy shows a result of copying X-Files, or is the success of these shows and X-Files indicative of a pre-existing audience appetite for conspiracy shows?

In any event, conspiracy shows sometimes have action-show moments, but everything is so DEEP WITH MEANING, THOUGH THE MEANING IS NEVER REALLY CLEAR and RIFE WITH CONSPIRACY and TRUST NO-ONE and DON’T OPEN DOORS YOU CAN’T GO THROUGH, AGENT MULDER that it makes me pine for the tidy days of good guys vs. bad guys and one-hour resolutions with no lasting consequences.

26

Let’s start a Kennedy assassination thread in Great Debates and maybe we’ll find out.