It's all a matter of self-definition. "Family" used to be defined from outside. Two parents and 2.2 children living in a cookie-cutter house in some meaningless suburb. Increasingly, like television, it is defined from within, by the members, according to their own emotional and spiritual needs.

And while I might sometimes long for a world in which my own preferences in that regard were universal, we continue to live in _this_ world, where each of us is part of a tiny niche in one regard or another…each part of some group's Long Tail, as it were. And in such a world, profusion of choice — especially in the super-critical matters — is a good thing.

(To return to the nominal topic of this post…)

I honestly can't remember the last time I watched a show aired by a network that existed when I was a little kid. (OK, OK…not technically true, since HBO, which I watch semi-obsessively, is actually almost as old as I am…but it's undergone a pretty radical transformation in the past decade.) If it weren't for all that profusion of choice, I'd literally have no reason or desire to own a TV.

TV, they say, is far more writer-friendly than movies. once the studio buys into the idea for a series, the writers take over and do their thing. the person reading their pages is a producer who is himself usually also a writer. meaning there's not that endless rewriting like in the movies to address flaws and suggestions made by studio execs who didn't bother reading the script.

i can't imagine jerry bruckheimer announcing some morning that CSI would be much much better if one of the characters turns out to be a lesbian. TV just doesn't work that way.

but movies still have the prestige that TV lacks. emmies are nice but every writer would much prefer winning an oscar.