Anti-Climacus

I've been kicking around the idea for an essay about, variously, the rise of AV Club-style criticism, the general rise in quality of tv, and (in particular) the weird insistence that television comedies be grounded in realism and contain a realistic depiction of the emotional element of friendships and relationships.* However, I have an article to finish writing, so it's a distinctly lower priority.

Nevertheless, I found a passage from David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram" apropos in this light:

Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.

*See, for example, the way 'sitcom-y' is a pejorative when used in reference to a sitcom, which blows my mind whenever I think about it.