ON AN ON THE AIR

BLUE STREAK (Steven Daly, TV Guide)

American network TV has changed dramatically over the past decade — and so, it seems, has viewers' tolerance. Anyone who surfed the prime-time channels this past season and on through the summer will have felt a distinct swell in the number of affronts to what was once considered good taste.

During the 8 to 9 pm family hour, masturbation jokes abound — and they're a far cry from Seinfeld's brilliantly discreet "master of my domain." Fox's That '70s Show shows a male teenager milking a cow with astounding vigor — "Why are you so good at that?" asks his dad. On NBC's Friends, direct references to masturbation and "good old-fashioned American girl-on-girl action" are commonplace. At 9, Will & Grace gets down 'n' dirtier as naughty Karen gaily fires off double entendres ("Since Stan and I split, I've done nothing but touch my muffin") and guest star Minnie Driver skips such niceties when she reveals that she "shags like a banshee."

Network dramas sally forth with even more intense shock tactics--and no longer at the standard 10 pm watershed. This season on Fox's 24, which airs at 9 pm, viewers were exposed to extremely graphic torture scenes--including one in which Agent Jack Bauer literally had his heart stopped while he was slashed, burned and shocked by a taser. On ER, a surgeon had his arm sheared off by a propeller blade; in a later episode, a patient crouched in agony on a gurney as doctors removed a pink sex toy from his fundament.

On the Third Watch season finale on NBC, Alex Taylor was literally blown in two, surviving a blast just long enough to watch her legs go thump on the ground beside her. One method of murder on CBS' CSI: Crime Scene Investigation was death by meat-grinder, and a forensic clue on CSI: Miami was the trace of penile tissue trapped under a female victim's retainer. How much grosser can it get?

It would be one thing if all the smut and violence advanced interesting storylines, but television is almost universally drek these days. CSI is a good example of a show that's forsaken reasonably intriguing plots for mere gross outs. The inclusion of sex and violence has come as a substitute for entertainment, not as a complement. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 7, 2003 11:27 AM