When Network TV Was Good

comfort food, balance, and over-consumption

Everyone has their “comfort food” TV show: the show they turn to when they want to watch something but can’t work up the energy to watch anything new. I think it’s a trend that has grown tremendously with my generation, a byproduct of the sheer ease of access we have with home media. In the past, you watched whatever was being broadcast at the same time every week, and you found comfort in that routine with your family. Now that we can access just about anything at any time, the routine has shifted from gathering around the screen at a certain time and instead gathering around the same show over and over again.¹

While many people turn to something like The Office, or Friends, or Parks and Rec², my wife has stranger tastes in comfort shows. At least every two years, she needs to go through the 1970s classic M*A*S*H, which of course is why we also have a dog named Radar O’Reilly. Currently, we’ve been going through The West Wing, another option that few people would turn to for light, fun background watching for comfort. I suppose if entertainment is an escape, my wife escapes into things she would never want to deal with in real life: war, politics, and Rob Lowe.

If you haven’t ever seen The West Wing, you should look it up on Netflix³ at the very least to be reminded of a time where network TV was king. I’m a fairly nostalgic person, though not in the “things were better back in my day” sort of way⁴. I like progress as much as I like respecting the past. It’s nothing new: I’ve always stated my deep, deep love for balance and honesty, which is why I love Star Wars but don’t believe we have to constantly release more Star Wars content.

All that said, there are a few things from the past that I deeply believe were better than what we have today. I miss the emo/punk music scene of my high school years, for example, and I miss a time in which good television drama could be written without using sex, profanity, and violence as a crutch in the place of good writing. Just because we can write whatever we want in a show (since some streaming service will allow it) doesn’t mean we should⁵. Believe it or not, constraints make for better writing and better entertainment.

Watching The West Wing in 2026 serves as a refreshing peek back in time in light of these things. The show still exists to remind us of a time where scripted drama on network TV was handled with care and dignity and attention to detail. It’s a look into a time where we weren’t being blasted with every single unimportant “headline” that popped up or was tweeted out, instead with news needing to be reported and then disseminated via word of mouth. It’s a look into a time in which it was cool to fight for a better America regardless of political party affiliation.

Those days are gone, replaced of course by a culture that worships poorly written entertainment, ragebait, and finger pointing. Those days are, in fact, days that I miss.

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There’s one very specific episode entitled “War Crimes”, which is either episode 5 or 6 of season 3 depending on what internet source you look up⁶. A journalist named Will Sawyer appears in this episode as a side character who had been in the international field but had to return to America because a price was put on his head. His character was in a dangerous place reporting on dangerous people, and because of that he viewed his temporary assignment to the White House as being very boring.

Will Sawyer exists in only this episode and never shows up in the series ever again. In fact, he’s only in this episode to push along one plot point, about a quote he was given that could get a staffer in trouble. In a testament to the quality of writing in the show, Will Sawyer casually drops an outstanding quote at the end of the episode, then turns and walks off into oblivion.

After he reveals that he’s not interested in writing a story on the quote, he explains why he doesn’t like the White House gig:

I don’t like being a stenographer. And I don’t like writing gossip. I read a column last week where a lady bemoaned the decade of scandals she’s had to cover, as if the news was to blame for the quality of journalism. I don’t know if there’s ever been a more important time for me to be good at what I do.

What a quote! That’s simple supply and demand: the people demanded more news about scandals and so journalists had to keep giving it to them. But supply and demand isn’t by nature a good thing, it’s simply something that happens. Just because something is in-demand doesn’t mean it’s worth it.

If we keep eating cheeseburgers and fries for every meal, we shouldn’t blame the cheeseburgers and fries for the reason that we don’t lose weight. If we only consume gossip and scandal, we shouldn’t be mad at the headlines when they’re only reporting gossip and scandal.

I think it would have been nice if more people had watched this episode. It would have been a great cautionary tale about consumption. People who look back on the entire series now, some 26 years after it first aired, frequently talk about its optimistic, sometimes idealized version of America and politics like they’re bad things. I’m not sure when it is that optimism and ideals became bad things, but I’m starting to think it was primarily in the last 26 years. Sadly, the quality of journalism has followed that same trend and with it the quality of network TV.

But I still believe in balance, even when I’m not feeling optimistic, so I still believe that this current course of trends will over-correct like every other trend has before it. I like to believe that we will recover from our addictions. I’ve got a soft spot for the Recovery Community and I’ve seen enough healing to know that any level of healing is possible. So I like to believe that we will someday reach a point where we stop obsessing over gossip and rage and then blaming the news for giving us more gossip and rage. I like to believe that we will eventually grow tired of consumption and desire to truly create again. I like to believe that we will someday reach a point where good writing doesn’t need a crutch.

Or maybe I mostly believe that, someday, network TV will be good again.

1. There’s psychological studies about it, if you need to deep dive like I did.

2. I’ve been informed that I can’t suggest Parks and Rec because somebody on social media is calling for it to be cancelled. My lawyers won’t give me any more information than this.

3. Which is ironic, right? Or you could be like us and buy the DVDs off of eBay.

4. I know a guy who is obsessed with the idea that the 1990s (when he was in high school) were the best era ever. I actually do love the 1990s, but we don’t live in the 1990s anymore and there’s no sense in worshiping the 1990s. I made a comment in a group text (that I didn’t ask to be in) about grunge music and he replied that he didn’t need “somebody who was still pooping their pants in the 90s to tell me what I already know about grunge music”. I responded by blocking his phone number.

5. Jurassic Park taught us that.

6. Season 3 was filmed before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, with plans to air two weeks after the attacks happened. In lieu of the season opener, they quickly wrote, performed, and released a “stage play” of sorts that aired in place of episode 1 of the storyline and raised money for the NYPD and FDNY. Depending on where you look, it is either s3e1 or it is a special episode and s3e1 is the originally scripted and planned episode.