compare television of today to that of 1997. Uh. 1997 had Oz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate SG-1, King of the Hill, Just Shoot Me, Ally McBeal, The X-Fi

compare television of today to that of 1997. Uh. 1997 had Oz, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Stargate SG-1, King of the Hill, Just Shoot Me, Ally McBeal, The X-Files, Friends, 3rd Rock from the Sun, and MTV still showed music videos. Cable television hadn't yet been completely overrun with 'reality' television. We joked about The History Channel becoming the WWII channel, but it hadn't yet become the Ancient Aliens, cheap, pseudo-reality parody of itself. I get your point about serialized stories, but I'd still take the great entertainment of the 90s over today's over-reliance on digital effects and low-quality writing to generate cheap drama. Besides, most shows aren't written with a set arc, they just keep writing more so long as the numbers stay up. So we get a couple of seasons of increasing drama and mystery, then it gets cancelled with no payoff. I'd rather have the amnesia-based reset system than that!