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A montage of 80s Soviet television visuals

nil desperandum

"You have to care about the outcome to be nervous."

- Alfonso Lincoln Ribeiro

on sincerity, depth

"If people don't like you, how are you suppose to know if you like yourself?"
- Debra Messing as Grace

anesthetizing schedule

Average lifetime TV consumption in North America approximates 100K hours or 12 years 24/7.

on insincerity

"I don't trust men who smile too much."
- Klingon Commander

elderly Jewish coffin maker

"A man is not a man until he's united with a woman."
- John Bleifer on Little House on the Prairie

New York

The current monthly rent on Will's and Grace's 2 bedroom apartment is estimated to be $6,500.

"Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?"

"You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you."
- Mary Tyler Moore

entertainment truism

"If our characters were perfect, there would be no show."

opposites

"Dave was a broadcaster who did standup and I'm a standup who did broadcasting."
- Jay Leno

shark

"There's no better incentive for an entrepreneur than to prove something."
- Barbara Corcoran

clarity

"It's been said that science-fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science-fiction: the improbable made possible. Fantasy: the impossible made probable."
- Rod Serling 

Korea

Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Blake:

They kid because of the tension.

Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce:

Yes. It helps to create more.

Hours spent yearly watching TV: 200 billion
- Clay Shirky, NYU

Image source here.

formative years

"When it comes to heavy reading? Not when there was a tv show to watch."
- Martin Short

Tavis Smiley: I raise all that to ask what is it about our culture, about our society, that makes that kind of political satire work so well today?

Ed Helms: We are so just rife with hypocrisy, it is all around us. It’s everywhere. It’s not just even in the political forum, it is in the media coverage, the news coverage, of politics is just so abundantly hypocritical at times.

I think that just from my experience on “The Daily Show,” that is what we always looked for. It was never an ideological angle, like how do we skewer the right wing or whatever. It was always who is being hypocritical here.

That is the very foundation of “The Colbert Report” is a character who is so ridiculously hypocritical (laughter) and self-involved that I think that it’s a release valve for fans who are just sort of fed up and angry with all of this hypocrisy around us, and then they get to see a guy like Jon Stewart just nail it, like really surgically dissect why what Barack Obama said in that situation was ludicrously hypocritical, or what Bill O’Reilly said, or whomever.

It’s also fun. There’s a little bit of an innocence to it because at the end of the day it’s just for laughs, and so it has some meaty content and some fun to it.

"Anticipation itself is a sensory delight; a moment to be savoured and relished; not to be rushed into and wallowed in like swine in a trough."
- Major Charles Emerson Winchester III

T.V.

tv