Broken Threads

I think that a good deal of the problem with Cable TV entertainment: to be precise, its decline into a pit of irrelevant posturings, is due to the growth of commercials. Commercials constitute a break in the thread of the narrative of the program being presented, and it seems there may be a critical threshhold - which we seem to have crossed - beyond which the experience of narrative continuity breaks down.

Once the continuity of a narrative breaks down, we are left with individual bits and pieces, related by time and proponquity, but not by the glue of intelligent mind... the mind of the viewer has gone elsewhere, possibly into the kitchen, come back and discovered the commercials are still on, gone somewhere else, and possibly have found something interesting to do.

The "snippets of show" that are left are like junk DNA floating around in animal cells.

This is why so many shows, such as the various Housewives series, have no real beginning and no middle and no end, strive as Andy Cohen does to make them credible. The only thing interesting about these series is the reunions Mr. Cohen has where he unleashes the primal females to prey on each other.

The Continuity of the Story has broken down here and in many other parts of our lives. We shall repair it, but with what mortar and which bricks? They had better be the best ones.
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