My wife sent the hilarious, oblong (and record length) picture to me from Pintrest and I laughed pretty hard, and then I thought “man, we book writers take a beating for a missed comma or something that’s clearly only a typo yet the most popular shows on television get away with MURDER” (pun intended).

Now there are some realities I’m willing to at least partially concede:

1) Television has never risen in most minds to the level of “art”, though I would disagree at least to the degree that over the past decade some truly excellent television has raised the bar (Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, Nurse Jackie, Justified, The Following, The Sopranos (done), Deadwood (done), and Entourage (done, just to name a few).

NOTE: There are quite a few more I’ve not listed but trust me, television has risen the bar above, I believe, the film industry. With the advent of DVR allowing ME to decide the when and where I watch a program, affording me incredible flexibility in utilizing my own schedule more efficiently, I rarely watch film anymore (and being the movie buff I am, this fact saddens me immensely—not the better quality of TV but rather the serious decline in films combined with the outrageous cost associated with watching that medium in its natural venue, the theater).

2) More has always been expected from writers of literature, even in the realm of “genre”, whether fair or not. I’ve certainly done my complaining about the quality of books out there but that actually supports me complaining about the quality of writing anywhere else, too, so that makes #2 a wash.

All manner of fiction normally requires a certain amount of something we call “suspension of disbelief”, the point being primarily that we watch or read (or listen to) fiction in order to escape; we actually pine for such realities as beaming from one place to another or heroes with near (or, in the case of comics brought to film, actual) superhuman abilities to fight, outwit, drive, and solve cases.

In other words, if books, movies, television, or plays were about everyday life exactly as we live it, they would cease to be interesting.

All of the above having been said, there is an awful abuse that has been wholeheartedly accepted by the viewing public that bothers me at a basic level of intelligence and not only bends my willingness to suspend disbelief but shatters it into a quadrillion indeterminable pieces:

The way TV, movies, and yes, even books treat technology, not in Science Fiction but rather in settings that are otherwise meant to represent the world we actually live in.

Clearly the example shown in the picture I included (one of the myriad CSI breakaways that dominate the ratings) is exaggerated  for effect, but let me tell you: not by much.

The part that bothers me is the way writers have taken the “give me an inch I’ll go a mile” approach. The suspension of disbelief can and should allow fiction writers to have some breadth in their discretion to bend rules of space, physics, and other generally recognized rules of our universe and current levels of technology.

But come on people. Writers of these shows have gone so far as to cross the line from a fictional presentation of twenty-first century cops to granting the police detectives Science Fiction-like gadgetry, computer enhancement, computer capabilities (don’t you just love the way that A) all computers are run by typing commands into the keyboard B) hacking into the Federal Reserve or any database in the world not only takes seconds but also presents its data in a gorgeous screen display when trying to get a real-life Excel spreadsheet to print columns the way you need it to can literally drive a person to insanity, and C) the laws of pixels in digital photography have utterly disappeared altogether—as is depicted in the humorous photograph to the left?).

I am not a super-critic. I expect a certain amount of digital wizardry when I open a book or sit down for a movie or television program, but as a writer of novels, I feel that authors are held to a completely different standard than are the writers of (in particular) television.

Okay, I know, this is the part where you laugh uncontrollably and ask me if I actually just suggested that there is any comparison whatsoever to be made between books as an art form and TELEVISION.

You’re damn right I do. My DirecTv package costs well over one hundred dollars a month (and I am sure whether you are a Dish or cable subscriber, your costs are not that much different than mine). Yet my books—OUR BOOKS—if priced anywhere near or above five dollars are scoffed at as overpriced and they do not sell. (I’m speaking in generalities.)

So hell yes I demand some fucking effort on the part of these writers when doing their high-paid jobs producing their exorbitantly-priced product. It’s pure laziness on the part of television writers to be able to solve their crimes not with intellect or great detective work but rather technology that doesn’t exist any more than the transporters from Star Trek exist in this, the twenty-first century.

Think about it: if you were watching CSI—not come new Sci-Fi program—but CSI or Law & Order or any honest-to-God current crime show and detectives started beaming themselves from the precinct to the suspect’s location, would you sit there and continue to watch or would you stand up and call foul?

I am as humorous as the next person (more so, actually) and I already said I laughed my hind end off at the CSI “spoof”. But then it left me sad. Because I have throughout the years stopped watching programs because of the pure, inexcusable laziness of the writers.

And the worst part? I’M a writer, trying to get by, and these dingleberries are getting paid top dollar to write the next script for the next CSI show.

What is the point of this blog? I mean, beyond pointing out the obvious. Not much. I just couldn’t let it slide this time. As a society in so many other ways I see us slipping intellectually. Slipping? Hell, rolling ass over teak kettle down the mountainside. And yes, I see the irony in using television as my sword in this battle.

But much of the programming (i.e. WRITING) has gotten so much better. I mean really excellent stuff. I had not watched television programs short of perhaps one each year (over the decades it seems there were always a few excellently-written and performed shows: NYPD Blue, ER, Frazier, Seinfeld, etc.) but never anything approaching many, much less a cornucopia, but I am telling you, television has stepped it up, particularly in the cable-subscription and pay-channel areas. Still, even for people who wouldn’t dream of paying for television, there are shows like The Following and Modern Family and several others that are on regular network television and are honestly better than most of what you’re seeing in the theaters these days.

That said, yes, television has also taken a HUGE step backwards. It pains me when shows that flaunt non-existent technology in the faces of people’s intellects garner massive popularity and ratings. I don’t know which is worse: the fact that the writers write it or the fact that those watching either don’t understand or don’t care.

Both scenarios bode poorly for the state of the mind in this, our twenty-first century. The dinosaurs only had brains the size of kernels of corn and they survived for a hundred and sixty-five million years. Perhaps I shouldn’t worry so much. Something tells me, however, that more was expected from we humans. A lot more.

The very fact that I’m using television as my champion probably puts me in the same group about whom I am writing. Maybe we’re all—each of us—a big cosmic disappointment. I know I don’t swagger as I did when I was twenty-one, believing I had the world figured out. Oh, I still think I have the world mostly figured out, I just don’t feel like I’m a valuable cog anymore. Or, rather, that the cogs aren’t as spectacular as I once thought they were.

I can tell you one thing for sure: I’ll never be amongst those who marvel at a CSI professional using “pixel enhancement” to see the reflection of a suspect off a screw in a license plate.

And yes, I have seen such tomfoolery perpetrated for real (perhaps not a screw in a license plate, but the difference was negligible and the quality of the reflection and detail the crime unit was able to glean made me sick to my stomach—shame on you writers).

Now before you start commenting that there are a lot more important things in the world (global warming, waterless children, polluted atmosphere) let me stop you. I know. This isn’t HuffPost. I’m writing about writing. And fiction at that. I’m not going to lose any sleep (nor have I ever lost any sleep) over the laziness of television writers (or any writers, for that matter).

I will continue to write what I write, using the compass and talents God gave me, and I will try like heck not to take grotesquely dishonest shortcuts that, were I to do so, should infuriate my readers. And that is why I wrote this piece. Simply to wake a few people perhaps. Don’t let them cram everything they write into your brain—don’t believe everything you see or read. And stand up once in a while. Turn off a program that is absolutely playing you for an idiot.

Tell them no. You won’t take that lazy-ass, disrespectful writing and programming.

It really is silly. But it’s also truly insulting.

You want to see things that are cool but not yet available to our society in technological form? Go watch a movie about the distant future. Turn to the Sci-Fi channel. But when a cop show is competing to be real, it’s a farce. NYPD Blue, in my opinion, was the best cop show ever to run on network television. Hell, maybe to include cable and pay-stations. It was gritty, honest, real fucking police work. Yeah, they purposely pushed the edge of showing ass crack and boob cleavage on Prime Time Television, but it was good stuff, man. The dialect was spot on, the plots were fresh and real, the detectives human, and the whole show exuded a harsh reality that made you want to tune in every week.

These CSI offshoots should be ashamed and the writers who type out this garbage should be drummed out of the guild.

Yeah, I know, they’re laughing all the way to the bank.

‘S okay. I get it. The bar is low. Maybe it’s always been low and I just wish it were higher.

You get what you pay for, I suppose, and there’s no risk of CSI:Miami showing up on HBO or Showtime. SO I’ll pay my twenty-eight bucks a month for those channels and watch some real quality writing.

And the world will keep on turning for we humans.

But not for another hundred and sixty-five million years, I’ll bet.

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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.

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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)