Bummer

This sad thing happened recently: the 3 people who started Television Without Pity have left one year after Bravo bought the site. Back then, they promised nothing would change, but you can't really promise that. Like any good gossip hound, I am searching around for what's behind it all - some of it I can guess, sure, but other blogs are trying to fill in the rest. A commenter said this: "People think you can take something small and beloved and make it big and not lose anything in translation. And it rarely works." Bean wrote about feeling behind technologically, and I feel similarly about my relationship to the blog world. It's so incredibly meta to talk about blogging in a blog, but if you'll just join me in the wormhole for a minute, I'll spit it out. Here's the thing - I haven't lost touch with reality to the degree that this should be meaningful in the way that real, sad, horrible things are meaningful and invite reflection, but I have a long history reading stuff on this site, which I discovered through Entertainment Weekly like in 2000 when it was called Mighty Big TV and did like 10 tv shows. That was its second evolution, from Dawson's Wrap, which was I'm sure fabulous and awesome and in the dark ages of the internet, back when blogs were in their infancy and people were mostly on dial-up. Which all sounds so corny and old-mannish and, again, I know it's not actually significant except it is, sort of, in the newish world of getting information through blogs, and how that world looks too old for its age, like a trashy LA girl who tans too much and eats a Triscuit a week, and in the emerging reality within that world that corporations show up really late to every party, and when they do they are always a buzzkill, even though the people within them don't all mean to be.

I first visited them because good writers - most of whom were/are freelance or even employed full-time as writers - write funny recaps of television shows, with lots of editorial commentary and not like "I really didn't like it when Haley said she wanted a divorce from Nathan. Booo!" like they do over at TVGuide.com, but funny, sarcastic, intelligent jokes of the more highbrow and, it must be said, snobby variety. Which, I'm okay with that, even if I have to look up a bunch of the allusions on Wikipedia. I am aware there are conflicting ideas (even in my own head) about if this is awesome or a supreme waste of time, but I love tv shows and I love reading about them. It enhances the experience, just like reading Dahlia Lithwick enhances the experience of examining the rulings of the Supreme Court . . . well, okay, that's a stretch. I can't really justify doubling my television consumption in this way, so I just operate under the assumption that it's fine. Ish. Except now it's all changing. Like most changes, I don't take it well.