Jason Shafer

Most Arrested Development fans will say they wish there were more seasons, but I beg to differ. Look at The Office… compare the first 3-4 seasons with the rest. They should’ve quit while they were ahead, as is the case with Scrubs and many other TV shows (LOST!). (Yes, this is highly subjective.)

Here’s the point of my rant. The dollar bill hurts the art of creating something amazing. When a piece of art in the “successful” commercial mainstream reaches insane levels of popularity, the ability to discern when enough’s enough and the creative statement has been made is effectively diminished. At that point, the goal to make money becomes more important than the art itself, and the value of the art diminishes exponentially. Scrubs switched networks and lost their lead guy but kept going. Did the characters still have growing to do? Were there still untold stories? Nope! My wife’s show list includes a few that had some false series finale’s like Seventh Heaven and One Tree Hill, which actually gained audience with this stunt and scored at least another season of profit that it would otherwise not have had. (By the way these shows are crap and there is virtually no artistic value whatsoever in them). The Office is about to loose their lead guy, but apparently they refuse to quit. You know why? It’s making too much money for them to realize they’ve lost their edge.

Shame on us for watching it and giving them reason to produce crappy show after crappy show. I’m glad Arrested Development stopped when it did. And I don’t hope for a movie, as many fans do. It’s best the way it is. Memorialized, perfect, complete, and untainted by a diluted artistic expression for the sake of the dollar (although I’m sure they made plenty of money).

As much as I respect the people that figured out how to manufacture dollars out of art, I resent them for ruining the very same art by distracting the artists with success and making their product worse for it.

It is after midnight and I woke up pretty early this morning to go riding in some stupid hot weather, so I’m just about completely exhausted and could be off my rocker, but there’s gotta be something to this. Can I get a witness?!