The Evolution Will Not Be Televised

         TV executives are pale, black-hearted husks summoned from the Hellfire to do Satan's bidding. They wear fine white collars and pass themselves off as human beings, but their shameless charade doesn't fool me. Before I launch my crusade in full, first some context.

         Freaks and Geeks is the greatest TV show of all time. Mind you, that assertion is for the most part sentimental. If I were to give my objective input on the matter, I would nominate The Simpsons for that position, as no program before or since has sown such massive cultural influence or exhibited a brand of genius quite so omnivorous. What it lacks in innovation, however, Freaks and Geeks makes up for in heart. On the surface, it's just a show about two groups of high school outsiders (burnouts and geeks) in the Michigan suburbs of 1980. However, there is so much achingly genuine content in those 16 episodes that, for me at least, the show is elevated past its simple facade, instead becoming a beacon of faith in humanity. That's right, beacon of faith regardless, the bigwigs shut it down after a paltry 16 episodes. And this is where cloudy-eyed reverence becomes pink-faced rage, complete with steam blowing out of my ears.

         The atrocity those empty suits committed 10 years ago is one of the great crimes of all time, on par with some sort of combination of genocide and rape, like rounding up every lefty on Earth and stuffing a traffic cone up his ass before throwing them all into a Hudson Bay-sized McDonald's grease pit to fry. The perpetrators should have their humanity revoked and be sent back to their bedrooms (i.e. the innermost circles of Hell) without supper to think about what they've done.

         Now, I understand, we live in a competitive, moneymaking society and, in truth, very few people watched the show when it aired. I didn't, for two reasons. One, I was too young at the time, both to know of the show and to relate to its angsty teenage content. Two, I've simply never been a fan of TV and likely never will be. I wonder why. Don't get me wrong, there are some non-F & G shows that I adore, but for every paragon of episodic entertainment like The Wire or Home Movies, there's a Desperate Housewives, The Bachelor, Jersey Shore, and whatever that show is about Kim Kardashian and her similarly fake-boobed friends/relatives.

         Speaking of boobs, do you ever wonder why your TV set is so affectionately referred to as the boob tube? How about the idiot box? One reason is because of the wealthy, educated fucktards who run our zeitgeist through this most base of artistic media. Sometimes I truly wonder how these smirking assholes opted to lord over what should be an inherently creative industry, and I imagine them thinking something like this:

         "Bringing my chokingly pervasive sense of blandness and derivation to a traditional business career just doesn't get me off. No, I need to work in a place where creative people can exercise their imagination just for me to vacuum up any original output. Yeah, maybe that'll get me hard for once in my otherwise passionless life."

         Unfortunately, I carry around too much twisting, barbed anger to lay it all on one conference table flanked by pasty white guys in suits and swivel chairs. No, the blame must be spread around, and the second culprit is you, America. We may watch the colorful idiocy that flashes on the screen slack-jawed, in a state of deep, blissful vegetation, but there is hope for a better tomorrow. The fat, stupid masses can demand more. We can and should take the initiative to refuse the viscous mixture of post-Chinese buffet fecal matter and boiling plastic we're regularly spoonfed, instead choosing to spend our time watching something other than the foul liquid that collects at the bottom of our garbage bins. I'll my thoughts on movies at this for now: saying that the future of TV is brighter than Hollywood's is like saying that drowning is better than being buried alive. And don't even get me started on today's music industry.

         The story of Freaks and Geeks is intensely bittersweet for me. The fact that something so human and humbly moving ever came to be in the first place fills me with a rejuvenating faith and resolve to live for the betterment of my species. The fact that it was cancelled before it was one whole season in makes me want to ride an atomic bomb as it drops, waving my hat and screaming "Yee-haw!" like in Doctor Strangelove.