Great article! I agree; cop shows and Westerns are the pits. And most other material on TV isn't much better.

I had a nightmare when I was around 12 or so. There was a monster. It had a square head and one huge eye shaped like a triangle that took up much of its face. It flew through the air. If it touched someone, the person would likewise have a box-shaped head and a single triangular eye. The affected person would no longer be able to speak except to repeat what the monster was saying. And they could no longer see, except to see what the beast was seeing.

When I woke up, I realized that the monster was TV. Now I understand that TV is one of the main instruments for keeping us bound to the Matrix—a metaphor for the social conditioning that keeps us working for the system, buying, consuming, loving, and hating as we're told to do so, and never asking questions. That was when I swore off TV.