What, no Gilligan's Island?
FOXNews.com - Mensa Picks 10 Smartest TV Shows of All Time - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment: "The head of genius organization Mensa has picked the 10 Smartest TV Shows of All Time —sparking debate in the blogosphere, especially over the inclusion of the 1990s sitcom 'Mad About You.'"
16 comments:
MAD ABOUT YOU started well.
COSMOS was a weak attempt to recapitulate CONNECTIONS.
All told, another good argument against IQ scores measuring much more than the ability to take IQ tests. No sour grapes here...I am Very good at these, and am frequently and in some ways consistently as dumb as a Bush.
Sometimes I'm even dumber than that.
Aack!
the trouble with these number crunchers is that it is assumed they have aesthetic and artistic intelligence. this is a real bad assumption. as this list proves.
More like, this is the top 10 of Smug, We-Just-Think-We're-Smart shows. Where are The Prisoner and (no pun intended) Get Smart?
i been reading the thing. i really like the analysis of the shows picked. it's like the analysis of a song that one of the drooling zombies on american bandstand would utter as a kind of justification for his idiotic judgement. "well, it wuz, ya know, reely good. and it wuz, ya know, something i liked." this "picker" is clearly someone who worships show business, and not intelligence. because bill nye the science guy was clearly more "intelligent" than any of these shows. so what he's talkiing about isnt intelligent tv shows. what he's talking about is prime time crap that made an effort to "appear" intelligent so that it could squeeze in some "justified" titillation. which is what really grabs prime time viewers. it just has to be disguised. so these shows probably did or do that successfully. i wonder if this mensa dude looks anything like the comic book store owner on the simpsons. which show wasnt on the list, as i recall.
I saw this on Ken Levine's blog and replied there, but I'll repeat that I thought "All In the Family" sucked. I'm reminded of Frank Denton's latest posting about Charlie Chan movies and how a plan to show a bunch of them on TV was halted by objections from our Chinese-Americans. Ditto the blacks complaining about Amos and Andy with the all black cast. But show a white male as an ignorant bigot and it's hunky dory. I also didn't like it because I thought the characters were caricatures and the jokes broad and obvious. And that shrill Edith, gak! Then again, I'm smarter than most Mensans.
So, sit-coms that are only funny because of the political statement they make hit the list, but those that are funny because someone took the time to actually write funny dialog don't. Go figure.
gonna go with the captain whole hog here for once. all in the family was a smug, pompous norman lear assault on the bible belt and any opinions that might be held by any white american unbrainwashed by a college state "education." the reason it got great ratings was becasue most of america held the same views as archie bunker. which norman lear and the liberal tribalists he adored considered Unacceptable opinions.
mash was practically a marxist manifesto. this mensa guy, like all liberals, gives intelligence a bad name
Disappointing not to see “The Andy Griffith Show” in there somewhere.
JTD
Except for Mad About You, thought this was a pretty good list, but you could easily make another top ten list and it would be as accurate. All In The Family was one of the greatest of all time, hands down,especially in context of its times and what was going on in the world. Joe
Oh, I wasn't a big fan of Mash though because I thought it was written around the one liners. I would have liked it better if it had been a Marxist manifesto. At least it would have been more interesting. It was against stupid wars though, and so am I. The movie version was great. Joe
The first three seasons of M*A*S*H were even better than the film, and certainly better than the series after Alda's ego was allowed to run wild and all the characters had to become blandly likeable.
ALL IN THE FAMILY was pretty sharp, if also often overstated, in the first five or six seasons, but I've thought THE BOB NEWHART SHOW was the best sitcom of its decade. But, hell, the Saturdays with ALL IN THE FAMILY, M*A*S*H, MTM SHOW, BOB NEWHART, and THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW were almost as good to juvenile me as the 1975 Saturdays with MTM, NEWHART, BURNETT, MONTY PYTHON and SNL in a row in the neck of CT I was living in. Didn't get another night even nearly that good till Fridays in DC in 1995: BABYLON 5, X-FILES and HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET all at their height. But I was no longer a kid, and not as utterly swept away.
That CBS line-up was killer. Somebody needs to do a "Top Ten TV Nights of All Time" list.
http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2008/02/best-nights-of-televisionin-usover-last.html
I might just tease a list out of this yet. There was the night ca. 1966 when you could go from WILD, WILD WEST to I SPY to, if so inclined, TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH...but you'd've missed TARZAN, which I rather enjoyed as a kid...
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