By Will Barber – Taylor

We have all become intellectual TV snobs; that is the hard, solid truth. Nobody will admit it but we have. These days, when we watch TV we cannot have a simple, straight forward plot. Oh no. We have to have story arcs, twist links to past seasons things that you think have been explained but in fact haven’t.

The main problem is that we love it. We love feeling this air of superiority when we get something that someone else doesn’t understand because we re watched Season Three at least five times. We get it. We are in on the joke. We know what the writers are saying.

You just want to watch a straight forward detective story or a sci – fi adventure? You aren’t allowed to anymore until you have gone back and watched it from the beginning. Not only that, if you haven’t seen such Guardian praised shows like Breaking Bad, you become a leper.

“Why haven’t you watched Breaking Bad?!”

“You have to watch Breaking Bad mate, get it on Netflix!”

“Breaking Bad is must see television! You really have to watch it.”

The thing all these well intentioned people don’t get is that I don’t want to watch Breaking Bad. The idea of it doesn’t appeal to me. Yet when I explain this to others they are shocked. Deeply shocked.

“How can you not watch Breaking Bad?!” they cry. You see these people have become part of the system. They have become intellectual TV snobs and because Breaking Bad had an on-going story arc, regular characters and complicated twists, it instantaneously became the latest “best TV show ever made”.

You see these intellectual TV snobs, which we have now all become, can’t have simple plots. No. Everything has to be over complicated. And you know why? Not because it works better for the story or it makes it a more compelling tale. Without these over complications that only the intellectual TV snob will get, they won’t get to feel clever. They won’t get the feeling of thrill when they work something out because they have read all the tie in novels and looked for the clues in the free poster that you only get when you buy the 17 part boxset; this has the special feature on that clue that nobody but the intellectual TV snob would notice.

Is that what you want when you sit down in front of the TV, to have to spend hours researching a TV show just so you understand the latest bloody episode? Well that is what you will have to do if you want to feel part of the intellectual TV snob world. Personally I’d rather just read a good book, thank you very much.

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