Ambiguously Moral Duo

So I finally got around to watching the series premiere of Kojak on USA over the weekend. I geve up on it about twenty minutes, and had one of those occasional epiphanies I have about my TV habits. It was just another cop show, where the good guys -- while flawed -- all wear white and the bad guys all wear black, and they dance with each other until the good guys ultimately win.

I can't tell you how stunningly uninteresting that is for me, even when casting Ving Rhames as Kojak looks so cool in principle.

What I've come around to is the dramatic equivalent of why I don't like traditional sitcoms. I like to decide on my own whether or not to laugh, and I like to decide on my own whether or not to like a character. Traditional dramas cling so hard to these fundamentally good but inevitably flawed characters, that it's hard not to see the stark contrast when presented with a Tony Soprano or a Vic Mackey. And my preference for those two over the mainstream alternatives couldn't be more clear.

At one point, I might have included Jack Bauer in that definition, but 24 is quickly moving into the realm of self-parody. Not sure if Mulder fits into this mold, but the guy was, to be fair, portrayed as a bit of a loser up until the point where he got the girl. Which is one of many points where the show took a dive in quality.

This may be one of the reasons I didn't entirely take to Carnivale. There's certainly a lot of good and evil afoot, but it's set up as a well-delineated battle, despite a couple of twists here and there regarding who's on which side. And those characters aren't ambiguous as much as they are deceitful about their allegiances, which is much different.

Granted, not everybody wants to be challenged by their entertainment choices. It's the Dave Matthews effect for television, and it's not necessarily a better or worse way to interact with media and culture. It's just not my way.