Equal Entertainment

These days, I find myself pressed for time.  It's not necessarily because I have so many worthwhile things to do, but more because I have a lot of worthless things that I want to do, and limited time to do them.  Occasionally among this list of worthless things comes a show I want to watch.  I know that if I want to catch up on a show that I've heard good things about, it will take many hours of sitting around and watching the show.  This is time that I could spend doing more worthwhile things; working out, writing, reading, etc.  The difference between then and now is that TV is slowly becoming a worthwhile endeavor.

How often are you told that you should be watching a show?  I'm guilty of doing this occasionally.  Certain shows are extremely entertaining, like Community.  Others are historically relevant, like Band of  Brothers.  Others have very well written suspense and drama, like The Wire or Breaking Bad.  The fact of the matter is that, as TV evolves, more shows come along that hold real artistic value.  Time is drawing near when watching TV will be considered just as valuable as reading a book.

It's already here to some extent.  One of the more popular book series out there is the Twilight series.  Without getting too much into a "Twilight Sucks" rant, I think I can safely say that the novel series isn't one which is designed to teach the world grand lessons.  Rather, it's supposed to be good fun.  There's a reasonable argument to be had that watching a TV series like Planet Earth, or even Mad Men.  Mad Men is a much more culturally relevant, engaging, and smart series than Twilight is.  

So what does this all mean?  When do we actually accept TV as a legitimate way to invest your time, as opposed to a distraction which needs to be limited?  When will books and TV be considered the same, if ever?