China Beach Books

This is not a review of this book, but a review of one of the book's reviews. The stars are directed at it.

Robert Moore asserts that Thompson was somehow nearsighted when he believed that the second golden age of television was on a decline. I'll admit that that is a nearsighted view to take, but I'll challenge Moore once again to defend the current glut of "acclaimed television". To compare "The Sopranos" to "Hill Street Blues" is like comparing stale meatloaf to a filet minion. "Hill Street Blues" is one of the finest crafted series ever created for television. Sure, it suffers from formula, and from some cornpone theatrics. But while "The Sopranos", perhaps nobly, aims for "art", it fails at being well-crafted. It supplants ambiguity and nihilistic cynicism for actual drama, and in doing so casts the worst insult at its audience - boredom. "Hill Street" is always entertaining and engaging, if sometimes contrived. Art or not, "The Sopranos" is simply poorly-crafted, overrated TV, and is incredibly banal in its execution.

Further, I'll challenge the assertion that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is great television. It has its moments, and it bends convention (always a plus). But the reason for the incredible number of academic papers written on its behalf has to do with the fact that college kids are nerds, geeks, and dorks. I know - I'm one too. I was even an English major. But I don't write about my geekdom to impress scholars. In fact I don't write about it at all, otherwise my desk would be filled with papers on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine", a show I enjoyed tremendously and feel at least on par with "Buffy", possibly superior. Do I care to push my interests into an "academic" community? Do I give a rat's a** to "convert" anyone to my side? No. I simply enjoy the show.

I write this in all earnestness, because I'm a dramatist and I take my craft seriously. As such, I can say this - there is not a single series on television right now that I would be proud to write for. Not one. I think back to the years of "Homicide", "L.A. Law", "Picket Fences", "Murder One", "St. Elsewhere", and, yes, "Hill Street Blues", and think, "Where did the real TV go?" "Veronica Mars", "Dead Like Me" and "Smallville" don't cut it for me, and they certainly don't belong in any discussion about true quality drama.

I do believe that there will one day be a third "Golden Age" of Television (maybe even not *on* television). As a writer, I plan to be at the forefront. But I do fear it may still be a long ways off.

This book is great at enhancing the viewing pleasure of classic TV shows now coming out on DVD. I read this book after viewing the first season of Hill Street Blues and the first three seasons of Moonlighting. I loved reading this and learned a lot about my favorite TV shows.

It's all too easy to assume that simply because we vegetate in front of the TV all day, that we have some kind of understanding of its history and how it works. This book summarises the importance of several landmark shows of the 1980s and 1990s, helping to show how a few select producers (chiefly refugees from The Mary Tyler Moore Show) were able to transform the quality of television, at least for a while. Note that the shows are discussed in their American context -- British viewers may be surprised to hear that anything was innovative about the "MASH without the laughter track", because MASH was always broadcast in the UK without a laughter track. But for placing the history of American TV in its natural home habitat, this remains an important and interesting introduction to quality television.

This excellent book on the development of what is widely known as Quality TV remains one of the finest books published in the field of television studies. Although television has now been around for sixty years, good writing about television shows has only developed in the past twenty years. Not that there wasn't a great deal of writing about television before then; it is merely that most writing was about the medium of television in a somewhat sociological/anthropological mode rather than in a textual analysis mode. Many earlier television scholars were as or more apt to write about the interaction of shows and commercials embedded within them as the shows themselves. In fact, prior to the last fifteen years it is difficult to find many writers who wrote directly about the shows as artistic productions.

The book's greatest strength is in its identification of the qualities that make up quality television shows and the discussion of the development of a series of shows in the eighties and early nineties that encapsulated those qualities. These parts of the book are very, very good indeed and one will be hard pressed to find better discussions of why HILL STREET BLUES, ST. ELSEWHERE, and MOONLIGHTING were great shows. The lead-up chapters that detail the pre-history of quality TV are also outstanding. Most of my review is going to argue with several of Thompson's points, but I want to be explicit that one of the virtues of a good book is that it makes you want to argue with it. Ludwig Wittgenstein told one of his students that a mark of a great book was that it made you want to throw it across a room and yell at it. I think Thompson is very wrong at several points, but he is wrong in important ways, and a reader can learn a great deal by debating Thompson as he or she reads.

One of the parts I want to argue with he is characterization of what counts as a Quality TV show. I'm not quite sure he is correct in dismissing, for instance, STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, as a quality TV show. I guess my complaint is that Thompson wants to establish a genre, one that would exclude unrealistic shows such as STAR TREK. But what of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER? This is very widely considered to be one of the truly great series of the past decade. Several of the television critics he quotes with approval--in particular David Bianculli and Ken Tucker--were both passionate admirers of BUFFY, lavishing praise on the show unequaled by any other show. Furthermore, Thompson seems to view the way that shows are received on college campuses as a mark of a show's quality. No show comes anywhere close to BUFFY in the way that it has been received by the academic community. In fact, academic papers on BUFFY come close to matching all papers written on all other shows combined in the past ten years. Yet, Thompson clearly states that two marks of quality shows are that they tend to win awards and that they are realistic. BUFFY received vast critical acclaim (and its reputation seems to grow with each passing year), but much to the consternation of the critics that praised it, it failed to receive any Emmys (apart from some minor ones) or even major nominations. And while it was a hybrid show (a blend of fantasy, drama, comedy, romance, and teen genres), one of the marks of a quality show as identified by Thompson, it was a show about vampires, which would clearly seem to violate the realism rule. Perhaps Thompson would have adjusted his criteria with the appearance of BUFFY (and perhaps he already has). My point is that the criteria of quality TV as outlined by Thompson describes no necessary or sufficient conditions, but more in the way of the "family resemblances" of which Wittgenstein (to refer to him again) wrote in his work. There are qualities that shows tend to have, though some will lack. But I suggest the "realism" criterion should be jettisoned entirely.

The book's greatest flaw is in more or less assuming that the age of quality television had ended. In fact, the group of shows that came after this book went to press far surpasses in literateness and intelligence the group of shows Thompson focuses on. If you watch an episode of THE SOPRANOS and then watch an episode of HILL STREET BLUES, you will immediately be struck by how much more complex and intelligent the former is. I recently started rewatching MOONLIGHTING and doing so confirmed how far television has come since that show, both in intellectual complexity and in production quality. The latter is an important point since as Thompson points out MOONLIGHTING was one of the most expensive shows ever produced. But my main point is this: I'll take THE X-FILES, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, THE SOPRANOS, FARSCAPE, SIX FEET UNDER, ANGEL, THE GILMORE GIRLS, DEAD LIKE ME, THE SHIELD, OZ, FIREFLY, SMALLVILLE, LOST, DEADWOOD, WONDERFALLS, THE WEST WING, ALIAS, 24, and VERONICA MARS over Thompson's group of shows any day.

I should note that in the final chapter Thompson does express some hope that the age of quality television has not ended, but there is definitely an overarching "rise and fall" tone to the book as a whole. The fact that he bizarrely finds such shows as TWIN PEAKS and NORTHERN EXPOSURE as harbingers that quality TV has pretty much exhausted its possibilities shows this. Thompson may hope that the era of quality TV is not over, but it is pretty clear that he fears that it is.

How did Thompson get it so wrong? I think the answer comes from his assessment of the effect that TWIN PEAKS had on television. Late in the book he writes, "TWIN PEAKS had an overall negative effect on quality drama." This is an absurd statement and I think it stems from Thompson's missing the overall effect that TWIN PEAKS had on television narrative. Although Thompson writes penetratingly and insightfully about most of the shows he takes up, he neglects one aspect of television that TWIN PEAKS changed. Thompson was a contributor to a book on the soap opera entitled WORLDS WITHOUT END: THE ART AND HISTORY OF THE SOAP OPERA. One thing all of the shows Thompson writes about except TWIN PEAKS is that none of them is structured around a master narrative. ST. ELSEWHERE and HILL STREET BLUES might contain six or seven or more lesser story arcs, but there isn't a real overarching story. There is a sense in which none of these shows is about anything in particular. The closest would be MOONLIGHTING with the ongoing flirtation between David and Maddie. What Thompson misses is that TWIN PEAKS introduced for the first time into a series an overarching master narrative. Although the show itself failed to produce a compelling long story arc in its second and disastrous season, the notion of a show being structured around a very long central story had been introduced. The first show that would profit from this would be THE X-FILES, with its seasons-long narrative dealing with alien colonization. The form would first be perfected in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER with each of its seven seasons structured primarily around a single main narrative, although there were also a host of smaller arcs as well, some extending over several seasons. This narrative form has been taken to its logical extreme by LOST, which will in the course of its currently projected six seasons tell a single story, very much the way an epic novel would. A substantial number of the shows that I list in the previous paragraph have absorbed the formal structures developed by TWIN PEAKS, THE X-FILES, and BUFFY.

In fact, while Thompson was lamenting what he imagined to be end of television's second golden age, what he was writing about was a group of shows that laid the foundation for an even better group of shows in the nineties and our decade. I have searched to see what Thompson has written since the publication of this book to see if he has repented of his own prophecies, but without success. It is quite possible that Thompson disapproves, but hopefully he has been delighted that television not only did not regress to standards of a previous age, but has actually continued to improve.

The book is out of date in other ways as well. For instance, Thompson speculates that the reason the hour-long drama was fading from the airwaves (a fading away that turned out not to occur) was its poor performance in syndication. This is true, but Thompson was writing before the advent of the DVD and one thing that we have learned is that hour long shows excel on DVD. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER has dramatically out performed on DVD most half-hour shows (as well as most hour long shows) that out did it in ratings during that show's seven-year run. LOST with its enormously complex plot, has done exceptionally well on DVD. The economics of DVD packaging is still being worked out, but in conjunction with syndication quality shows have a economic life that continues to make them viable in the industry.

Despite my disagreements with the book, this remains essential reading for anyone interested in the development of television in the past twenty-five years. Unlike Thompson, I remain optimistic about the future of quality TV. I have had my heart broken by a number of asinine cancellations (especially on FOX, where I have had to witness the demise of such great shows as WONDERFALLS, FIREFLY, and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT). I suffer a bit in reading this book about how networks would stick with shows that were doing poorly in ratings to develop and promote them. That happens so rarely now, though I am delighted that the new CW network has stuck with VERONICA MARS, a ratings failure despite being one of the most critically acclaimed shows on TV. But as excellent as the book is, it remains a cautionary tale about prognostication. The unstated theme of the book seems to be the rise and decline of quality TV, whereas actual history has proclaimed the rise and further rise of it.

The title of this book is provocative but something of a serious misnomer. Robert J. Thompson points out early on that the original "Golden Age of Television" took place in the Fifties and was built on the variety shows like "Texaco Star Theater" and "Your Show of Shows," the anthology dramas like "Playhouse 90" and "Studio One," and, of course, "I Love Lucy." Thompson also acknowledges that in the Seventies the situation comedy reached its "literate peak" with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "All in the Family," and "M*A*S*H." However, the argument for "Television's Second Golden Age: From 'Hill Street Blues' to 'ER'" covers a period from HSB's debute in 1981 to the present, where "ER" continues to be one of the top dramas on television. That is a period of more than two decades and while Thompson devotes a chapter to "The Second Golden Age of Television: "Cagney & Lacy," "Moonlighting," "L.A. Law," "thirtysomething," and "China Beach," essentially focusing on the Eighties, it is hard to say that the following decade, with "Twin Peaks," "Northern Exposure," "Picket Fences," "NYPD Blue," "Law & Order," "Homicide," "The X-Files," "Chicago Hope," and "ER" was not at least as strong (feel free to add to the list). Even if we are talking about the first decade of the 21st century we have "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "24," "The Practice," "Ally McBeal" and short-lived series like "My So Called Life" and "Once and Again" (and that is without dipping over to HBO and talking about "The Sopranos," "Six Feet Under," and the rest of their kind), all of which speak to quality dramatic programming.

That is why in the final analysis I see Thompson's argument as being not so much for a specific time period of great television, but rather advancing the proposition that the hour-long dramatic television series is the chief art form of the medium (yes, even more so than the situation comedy). I would even extend this argument to the mini-series, from "Roots" and "Shogun" to "War and Remembrance" and "Lonesome Dove," because the guiding principle of the extended narrative form remains the common denominator. "24" takes the idea of season-long story arc a unique extreme, but "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" did all of its complete seasons have a first-half story arc (e.g., Spike & Dru in Season 2) that then merged with a second-half story arc (e.g., the return of Angelus) that provided a framework for all of the individual episodes. Then there was "Murder One," which rather successfully devoted an entire season to one sensational murder trial. When a series loses its driving story arc, as when Dave and Maddie consummated their love on "Moonlighting," or when what was supposed to be the hook becomes the line and sinker as well, as when the question of who killed Laura Palmer ultimately derailed "Twin Peaks," the demise of the show simply affirms the principle in the negative.

Thompson's starting point is January 1981 when prime-time television was about to make a sudden and dramatic turn towards quality because of "Hill Street Blues," the show that Steven Bocho did not want to make and that nobody wanted to watch, but which became "television's first true masterpiece." However, Thompson argues that it was "St. Elsewhere" that was "TV's greatest show, ever" (having to do with key notions of "intertextuality" and "self-reflexivity"). Ultimately he is not defining a particular time period (especially since the "golden age" in question is clearly not over), but explaining why in the "vast wasteland" that Newton Minnow bemoaned so many years ago "quality" television is flourishing in terms of hour-long dramatic programming. Within that context Thompson clearly makes his case for much of the best television ever made having appeared on the networks since 1980. The book is half critical evaluation of these programs and half insider's tour looking at the decision-making process as well as the social, economic, and artistic forces that ended up revolutionizing the medium. Thompson also more than adequately proves he knows his television history, which is necessary to help convince those of us who are true students of the medium. Consequently, the fact that the title of this book is not a fair representation of its most significant claim, is not to be held against the author, because he has made in public an argument I have been making in private (okay, in class as well), for several years.

I am enjoying planning my trip to Thailand so much with this book. Lots of fun

Thailand's Islands & Beaches is a great book, as most of the books by Lonely Planet. Though you get tons of infomation that sometimes seems a little too musch. You have to learn to navigate around it, but when that is in place, it is really a big help.

I bought this travel guide for my upcoming trip to Thailand. I plan on spending 3 weeks, one in massage school in Bangkok and the rest at various dive sites in the South. So far this book has been very thorough on what to expect from Thai food, culture, etc. This is a great reference/guidebook. Supplement it with more current reviews/prices on-line.

One of the worst guide books I have ever read Sparse inaccurate information. Even though published March 2004 tells readers a Tuk Tuk in Patong Beach costs 10 baht (it costs 150 baht!)Full of broad information obviously culled from other (older) guides, not learned by personal experience. Garbage. Don't waste your money.

This book is particularly helpful as it contains many detailed maps. As well, the accomodation section is very useful for the traveler who does not have any set plans as it helps to show several different price ranges from budget to high end & includes phone numbers & websites of them frequently.
there are also tips for every type of traveler here in very detailed sections on every province in thailand. although it says islands & beaches there is a very good section on Bangkok city itself which is good as most people start & end up their Thailand vacation there anyway & spend some time in the city.