OPINION: Network TV and Mental Health

 I very rarely watch network TV shows such as sitcoms..

By chance (since it follows Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune --really the only TV shows I watch with any regularity) I have seen the "Dancing with the Stars" extravaganzas. This show is actually rather fun even if it is a caricature of itself...I mean, the dancers are such good acrobats/athletes that is kind of impressive.

Every once in a while I happen to see a sitcom--the one I used to chance on the most often was the one called "the Middle," which I thought was stupid but harmless.

But tonight I watched CBS sitcoms after the news because I was also busy typing out emails to friends and relatives and stopped to really WATCH them.

Uh, I don't know how to say this, but these shows are NUTS.

Like "Two Broke Girls." It is one silly gag after another and the people are all plastic living in this make believe NYC that is as phony as anything Hollywood has ever produced...the fact that it is in NYC lets them be "ethnically diverse"-- which can be excruciatingly unfunny.

Then the cop show, I guess it is " Mike and Molly"-- the one I saw tonight showed people who should be institutionalized rambling around a mythical Chicago, again with ethnic mixing that has nothing to do with real life Chicago as far as I know.

I also saw a lot of very overweight people on these shows and I kept thinking: have most Americans become SO fat that they have to be shown people who are ridiculously obese so they feel better about themselves ( "I'm not as fat as the people on that show, anyway").

But there is a broader question. These endless corny jokes and attempts to sometimes be "edgy" make me wonder: Why is anyone WATCHING these things?

All I can think of is the "cuteness" and escapist element to a lot of this stuff. Real life has sharper edges and can't be laughed off so easily most of the time.

And as I have implied, it makes me wonder about the mental health of a nation of people who NEED all this nonsense...

Sermon over.