After listening to Glenn and Helen interview Firefly writer Tim Minear, and reading a bit more of this conversation (much like a car wreck, it’s hard to pull your eyes away), I began to wonder about pop culture.

Among the Crunchies, there’s a serious, deep, aversion to pop culture. A sample:

The “conservatives” will not oppose promiscuity because sexual discipline would reduce the profits of corporations, which in their advertisements and entertainments encourage sexual self-indulgence as a way of selling merchandise.

This is a more detailed exploration of a view that, as another NR contributor once put it, “Pop culture is filth.”

I’m not there, frankly. And I don’t find these kinds of blanket denunciations terribly compelling. So let me offer a differing cultural critique: Our popular entertainment is not too ‘pornified,’ but it is too dumb.

For the last few years in a row, when the new fall schedules have come out, I’ve read about the new shows and had next to no interest in them. Nor the midseason replacements. An enthusiasm for the television offerings has gotten rarer and rarer; it’s a very similar effect at the Multiplex. But for now, let’s focus on television.

Looking back on my favorite shows – 24, Firefly, on and off the works of Joss Whedon, Coupling (the BBC version), Twin Peaks, Max Headroom, Young Indiana Jones Chronicles - I observed that the common theme was that they were all pretty complicated. You had to pay attention to these shows, and you probably wanted to tape them and maybe rewatch them. You want to get the season on DVD. If you missed a week, you were probably lost. Sometimes the full ramifications of an action or a comment wouldn’t be fully understood until weeks or even years later.

(Interesting aside – a couple of shows that I ought to like and don’t – X-Files, Alias, and Lost, have this detailed, intricately-plotted week-to-week format, but never have any payoffs. The writers appear to be making it up as they go along, a shaggy dog story in the form of a vast conspiracy, spy vs. spy, or stuck on a deserted island.)

I know why my most of my beloved shows have gotten canceled after a season or two. The average TV viewer doesn’t want to watch a show that requires them to pay attention, or be a bit in the dark whether this guy is a good guy or a bad guy or wait for a payoff in a week or two. They – generally – want short, simple, one-episode stories. Television networks also want cheap programming – thus, the explosion of reality shows. No reality show has kept my attention; the closest was “Murder in Small Town X,” and basically, that was reality contestants trying to solve a very Twin Peaks-style mystery. Eating bugs, team challenges, sucking up to the Donald – just not my bag.

I don’t begrudge television networks for pursuing the tastes of a majority of viewers. But I do observe that fare for those of us who like some complications, moral ambiguity, long storylines, and something to think about after the credits roll seems to be getting rarer and rarer.

So I’ll let the Crunch Crowd enjoy PAX; the keep-it-simple crowd enjoy reality shows, and those who want to see the Mom from Family Ties endlessly get beaten by a prostitute-addicted scummy husband can watch the Lifetime Network. But can I please get a television network to cater to my tastes?

“Dammit, I don’t have time to explain! You will pay attention to this storyline, or I will make you pay!”

“Diane, I’ve deduced that a network television audience may not have the capacity to follow an investigation this complicated. We might have had a prayer if we had been on cable.”

Cam: This is another example of me disagreeing with the crunchy cons as well. Conservatives don’t oppose promiscuity? Apparently Rod never heard the story of me making my 14-year old daughter return a bunch of clothes she bought at the mall because they were too revealing.

And I’m right there with you on television, Jim. I watch a grand total of two shows on television every week, “House” and “24″. Both are generally intelligent, well-written shows with a great deal of substance to them. When I want to be mindlessly entertained, I a) watch one of the “I Love the…” shows on VH-1, b) play baseball on my X-Box, or c) read a book.

I’m actually surprised that “24″ has lasted five seasons. I guess there must be some audience for shows like it, but I’m not convinced that we’ll ever have the great problem of having too many of these types of shows to choose from.

I’d be curious to know what each of you think the worst show on television is right now. I’d have to go with “Skating with Celebrities” (can you tell I watch a lot of Fox programming?)

Marshall: Do you think that the Crunchy Cons would agree that the only thing worse than today’s pop culture is their incoherent and idiotic arguments (like, for example), the one above?

Seriously, today’s TV sucks. Is there too much sex? Too much violence? I don’t know. But I know there’s not enough creativity — not enough risk taking. And, for the most part, the writing is attrocious.

Like Cam and Jim, there are about three or four shows that I watch consistently: CSI (the original, because I like the cast and the dialogue); Battlestar Galactica (which may be the best show on TV right now); and the Amzing Race (because it’s always well-cast and fantasically produced). I miss shows like SportsNight and the first two seasons of the West Wing, where you had to pay attention. The story moved quickly and the dialogue was the best.

Cam: Oooh, SportsNight! Even though it was undeniably liberal in its viewpoint (hello Aaron Sorkin), it was a great show. There was real chemistry between all of the characters, the storylines were pretty good, the quips were witty, and the women were hot.

I never watched the West Wing. I make it a point to never watch overtly political shows on television. The sight of seeing Republicans eating small children for dinner just annoys me. In fact, if I were watching “24″ for the first time this season, I would probably be turned off by it.

Jim: Ah, Sports Night. That was a great show, for about the first twenty minutes, and about the last three or four. In between, inevitably, one of the storylines would trigger a patented Aaron Sorkin Inspiring Speech(TM) about the evils of hunting, the evils of the Confederate flag, the evils of sexual harassment, etc. We would get about two minutes of speechifying, it would become abundantly clear that none of our lovable, clear-thinking characters could ever possibly disagree with Aaron Sorkin’s Weekly Diatribe, they would all nod their heads, and go back to work.

I have a like/hate relationship with West Wing. In some ways, it’s a pretty realistic depiction of how Washington operates - I think the non-speech dialogue is pretty damn accurate. And I loved their standard storyline: The President is faced with a choice, stick to his principles, or compromise to avoid painful political consequences.

The problem with the West Wing is that they always make the same choice (stick to principles) and they rarely, if ever, show the consequences. The Bartlett Administration always had its cake and ate it too; they always stood their ground and the American people always came around and agreed with their view. It was a truly Hollywood version of Washington politics. Somehow, we can do nuance, shades of gray, and moral compromises on a show like “24,” but Hollywood can’t show that politics is the art of the possible and requires compromises.

Also, the show had something of a weekly “reset” button, in that they would have these tremendous policy victories (we came back to find the votes and pass the bill!) but the following week, they were back to being the underdogs again.

By chance, I started tuning in to the West Wing during the season that was the Democratic Presidential Primary, with inspiring underdog Bail Organa - er, Jimmy Smits, taking on well-meaning but uninspiring Gary Cole and designated evil villain Democrat Tim Matheson. It was actually pretty good - the writers actually had to acknowledge that some Democrats are better than others, and that not all of them think the same. Cole got to make an argument for waiting ten years to legalize gay marriage, instead of forcing the fight now, that was very un-West-Wing-like.

Woman in Red: I agree guys. I haven’t watched an adult TV show other than CSI the original, in at least a year. The rest of prime time TV seems to be preoccupied with trying to out-do the competition in raunchiness, inanity, duplicity or offensiveness…or all of the above, in a jam-packed super hour!

Even glancing at shows like “The Simple Life”, “Survivor” or “Desperate Housewives” (gag) make me feel like my brain is shrinking.

The problem I find, seems to be that most shows on TV pander to our lowest qualities and baser instincts, reducing us to animalistic simplicity. All mindless sex, survival-at-all-costs competition and irresponsible fun at others’ expense. Virtues like honesty, integrity and generosity are objects of ridicule or patently ignored. If I want to be entertained by morons with none of these qualities, I’ll throw in “Spaceballs” for the millionth time — at least its more entertaining, and it’s not masquerading as quality programming.

But Jim is absolutely right, TV has become a forum where they refuse to challenge the viewer to think. Its called the boob tube and WE are the boobs - mindlessly watching any old crap they put up, as long as there is lots of fighting and all the sex the censors will allow. Pardon me, but if I’m going to watch that, I’ll just put on a porno - I prefer my sex and violence without an attempt at a plot. Not that prime time makes much of an attempt these days.

Unattainable: I am an unabashed viewer of VERY BAD TV, so I’m not sure I’m going to have a lot to offer, but give me a shot. I’ve always had a thing for TV that’s so bad it’s good. It just delights me. Of course, to be soooo bad, you loop all the way back around to good again, you have to be really bad– like, 7th Heaven or Laguna Beach or Beauty and the Geek (ok, that one’s actually endearing) or The Dukes of Hazzard. Now, that’s a line-up (hold on, I promise I’ll redeem myself!).

Yeah, I know. I have a problem. I also watch some decent shows, though. Grey’s Anatomy and Scrubs are both pretty clever, even if Grey’s is slipping into soap opera terrirory now that it’s got me hooked. I like Firefly, and I used to watch Alias, but truth be told, J.J. Abrams kind of ruined me on the get-emotionally-involved-in-an-intricate-series front. For about a month last year, I spent much of my life catching up on three seasons of Alias with friends. I’d never watched it before, but they had stumbled on it, and I was down with Michael Vartan, so I kicked back on the couch. I got totally hooked. We’d wait at the curb for the next installment to come from NetFlix and 4-man-relay it back into the house so it would be in the DVD player as quickly as possible. Seriously. Hooked.

So, I watched three seasons, donated large chunks of time and several of my heartstrings to Sydney and Vaughn and Rimbaldi and other nonsense, only to find in Season 4 that Jim is exactly right about Abrams. He’s making it all up as he goes along. There is no pay-off, and none of the questions you thought would be answered will be. That made me mad. Grrrrr. That’s why I don’t watch Lost, also written by J.J., and I ponder whether I should break the news to my friends who are Lost-addicts.

But enough about my bitterness. My point in writing this was to trumpet a little hope for folks who enjoy some noggin calisthenics with their TV. Sure, I can exist on Full House alone, but others cannot. The hope lies in DVDs and videos on iTunes.

The nature of an intelligent, intricate series is that you can’t jump in late. It’s very difficult. The show is not fun unless you’ve been there from the beginning. On one hand, this means there’s a certain level of camaraderie between fans of the show. It feels like a club you join, which intensifies fans’ feelings about the show and makes them more dedicated. On the other hand, it makes creating new fans of these shows well nigh impossible. The more dedicated the long-time fans become, the more intricate the show is, the more insider secrets are hidden in each script, the more left out new viewers feel. That’s why you see shows like Firefly ending up with rabid fans, but not in great enough numbers to make the show…er…fly. But the technologies of the 21st century, as is so often the case, have brought us a fix for this problem.

I would not have enjoyed any of Alias had I come into the show halfway through the second season, but because I saw it from the beginning, I got all hooked. But I didn’t get hooked watching it on TV, did I? I got hooked when a friend of mine got the DVDs. Because we could order/rent the DVDs, Alias earned a couple new fans. In the past, there was no way to bring people into an intricate show, to initiate them, to get them to understand unless one of the show’s fans was dedicated enough to listen to “now, who’s that guy?” “why did he kill her?” “is that the same box?” all. the. dang. way. through. a. show.

Now, you just hand your friend a set of DVDs. A couple weekends and a butt-printed couch later, he’s in the club. Initiated. Dedicated. A friend of mine watches Battlestar Galactica– another show that doesn’t mess around intellectually. I’m sure I’ll get into that, but it’s only because he has the DVDs on hand, so I can catch up.

So, I think DVDs (and downloadable episodes on iTunes) give intricate, intelligent shows a shot at success they’ve never had before. If they can last through a season, and get decent DVD sales (often driven by word-of-mouth and buzz advertising done by the aforementioned rabid fans), they’ve got a shot at a much better second season than first. I don’t think that was the case before. My hunch is that the audience for intelligent programming is much bigger than it appears right now, and it will start showing itself as more and more intelligent folks start learning they can Netflix their way into the 24 or the Battlestar club instead of moping on the outside.

What do y’all think? I mean, if you can bring yourself to respond to someone who watches Laguna Beach.

Jim: A brilliant and optimistic take on the subject, Unattainable. (I think I’m starting to see why you’re so unattainable.) I think you’re very accurately describing the phenomenon of how “cult hit” shows build their audiences today.

Unfortunately, we’re still at a weird not-quite-there stage. In his interview with Instapundit and Dr. Helen, Tim Minear said that some of his fans are speculating that Fox keeps picking up brainy, quirky, shows (Firefly, Wonderfalls, The Inside) cancelling them quickly, and then selling them on DVDs. Unfortunately, because the Fox television show producer and the Fox network are different entities, the conspiracy theory doesn’t quite add up.

So we’re at a point where a popular show can have a second life on DVD, and the popularity of the “Firefly” DVDs helped persuade Paramount to make the feature film, “Serenity.” (The movie didn’t do so hot at the box office, but now DVD sales have made it at least a marginal money-maker for Paramount. Come on, Little Show That Could!)

And yes, DVDs are a much better way to watch a show. No commerical breaks! “24″ is so much easier to bear! I have a suspicion that Hollywood’s creative class is picking up on this. Minear said he definately had it in mind when making “Wonderfalls.” (In a similar vein, one of the funner comments on the Firefly set was one of the creators saying that the first shot they filmed was designed with two actors so far apart that Fox would have no choice but to show it in widescreen.)

So I can see, five years down the road, DVDs becoming a serious alternative revenue stream for the creators of television shows. Unfortunately, for now we still need the TV shows to get picked up by somebody.

And the networks are, by and large, more comfortable with the predictable cop show, doctor show, lawyer show… (This is not to rag on any of those genres; House and Bones are growing on me and Law and Order Classic still has it most episodes. But when you’re doing the same old storylines and workplaces, you need a good cast, some hot writing and chemistry.)

By the way, regarding the crew of Grey’s Anatomy, I just want Dr. Gregory House to come in one week and kick all of their asses.