Maybe Murdoch Doesn't Watch TV on Sunday Nights
Rupert Murdoch has been described as a power-mad mogul, debasing the public discourse with the cheapest forms of entertainment and using right-wing propaganda masquerading as journalism to advance his nefarious ends. I used to think all that was true. Then I started watching "Arrested Development," which runs on Murdoch's Fox network on Sunday nights.
To say that it's the funniest program I've ever seen on television massively understates how good it is. Imagine if Shaquille O'Neal somehow joined a high school basketball team. You could say he's the best player on the squad, and it would be true, but it wouldn't quite capture the magnitude of the difference between him and everybody else.
Part of the genius of "Arrested Development" lies in its disdain for the conventions of television sitcoms. It's shot in pseudo-documentary style, with a hand-held camera, a narrator and no laugh track. It liberally employs flashbacks, which makes the jokes frequently run in reverse. (You see something funny, then you see something that happened anywhere from a minute to 20 years earlier and realize why what you just saw was even funnier than you thought.) Often there's something hilarious in the background of a scene you don't catch the first time. For all these reasons, the show avoids the drearily familiar set-up/punch-line rhythms of most mindless sitcoms.
It may seem odd that such a smart product would appear on a network known for winning the race to the cultural bottom, but perhaps it shouldn't be. After all, Fox also introduced "The Simpsons," which in its prime was also very edgy and innovative. More surprising is the fact that Fox has stuck with "Arrested Development" into its second season despite abysmal ratings.
What you really have to wonder is why Murdoch allows this artistically compelling ratings sinkhole to subvert his political agenda on a weekly basis. The program takes as an underlying assumption that the government and media are run by the same kind of buffoons found in the Bluth family, on whom the show centers.
In one episode, a photograph emerges that the authorities believe shows secret bunkers in Iraq. The Army -- whose manpower shortages have forced it to accept the enlistment of comically unprepared mama's boy Buster Bluth -- immediately deploys a new brigade to the region. A Fox News anchor announces, "Weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq! What does it mean for your weekend?" Unsurprisingly, the photograph turns out not to show weapons of mass destruction.
