All I'm gonna say is that Tony and Carmela Soprano were crap-ass parents, to both their biological and their surrogate children. The only one of their spawn that came out remotely OK was Meadow, and that's because she, like Seth Cohen of "The O.C.," pretty much raised herself.

H.H. wrote:

"The fact that TV writers have evolved far beyond the pat morality tales of past decades has undoubtedly enriched and enlivened the medium, bringing us complex, provocative dramatic works that once existed solely on the big screen. But when these tours through lawless alternative worlds stop posing uncomfortable questions and slip into the realm of morally equivocal fairy tales, it pays to reexamine our culture's attraction to dissolving boundaries and roaming free of all laws and principles."

The crucial word here is "fairy tales", which are in the realm of The Magical. And this is the clue that the writers of these boundary-blurring dramas are deeply lost in a major confusion in not only our culture, but the entire world's - the pre-rational/trans-rational confusion/fallacy - confusing pre-rational magic and mythic realms of consciousness and manifestation with their shifting unclear morality and more self-absorbed and self-centered and limited scope of morality to true trans-rational, the only true psychic and mystical realm where people are not out-casts nor out-laws, but trans-laws (they know the laws, and obey the rational ones, while not bound to the irrational or venal ones), the true psychic person is dedicated to the greatest good for the greatest number of people, because he/she has evolved though and past conventional morality. He/she TRANSCENDS boundaries, while clearly observing them and respecting them. The regressed ones blur boundaries with an astigmatic confusion, as described by H.H. The mess that Heather describes is people regressing to a pre-rational magical state where morality is not even a convention yet, conditions that existed in history long before the modern rational enlightenment of the 1700s. See Ken Wilber for more on this.

Heather's analysis tying our national cultural on television to the gross regression at the top (the Administration and the corrupt Congress-more Republican but some Democratic too) is sharp and very insightful.

For reasons of restoring a common moral outline to our country, Obama's is a necessity. McCain's endorsement of the Bush/Cheney era of blurring boundaries of truth and decency is enough to disqualify him, in my opinion.

An excellent article.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all very alarming . . . or something.

I effectively turned off network TV in 1990 when Law & Order hit the screen. Otherwise intelligent people seemed to love it, so I tried to watch it. But I couldn't. Week after week of so-called heroes (cops & prosecutors) who apparently had never heard of the U.S. Constitution and trampled the civil liberties of the bad guys -- all of whom were guilty, of course, 'cause some fascist thug of a cop had a gut feeling.

Eighteen years later and you can see the results of the popularity of that kind of simple, black and white thinking and disregard for civil liberties on the streets of St. Paul as the storm troopers break down doors and round up innocent civilians whose only crime is to peaceably exercise their first amendment rights.

And don't hold your breath for president Obama to end the police state that America's become. His only objection to the FISA Amendment was telecom immunity, and he swallowed that when it was clear he wasn't going to get the expanded warrantles spying powers without it. He refers regularly to the war on terror as if it were something other than a Republican talking point.

This country fought a World War to put down Nazi Germany, the very kind of nation that we have become, and shows like Law & Order and 24 have helped to pave the way.

For seeing T.V. programming for what it is, and then writing about it as such.

The T.V. viewer isn't the customer.

The T.V. viewer is the *product*

Fantastic article. Nothing else to say but thanks.

Americans are living in a fantasy world in a trance ........ tv, the internet, video games, etc have deepened the trance ........ its beyond belief that people can't see the reality around them.

I wish I could throw a switch and shut the whole electronic mess down for a month ......... people would be roaming the streets in a daze as they detoxed from the imaginary bullshit that has become their lives ........ then the reality of it all would hit them.

Heather Havrilesky obviously hasn't read the wonderful Sookie Stackhouse mystery series that 'True Blood' is based on. The books do a great job of pointing out the small-mindedness of bigotry of all kinds; the prejudice against vampires can be seen as a metaphor for all kinds of societal biases. Gay rights would be the most recent example, but there are many others. Hopefully the HBO series will stay as true to the books as possible.

I'm primarily known here on Salon for giving her grief over those articles that were poorly conceived, framed, written and researched. Contrary to the people who think ego is everything, I do not take pleasure in posting such insults. Which is why I'm glad she took her time and thought hard before writing this article.

Drama mostly lies in conflict, and the gray zone between good and evil is where most dramas take root. But that grey zone has gotten awfully wide in recent years, and the people staking claim to it are not dramatists but sensationalists.

In a junior high writing course, a teacher asked my class what the point of drama was. We made awkward stabs at an answer, until he shouted "NO!" and wrote the letters L-I-F-E on the blackboard, three feet tall. "The point of drama is showing you life! The life you live, that you might want to live, that you never wanted to live but should try to understand."

Today's TV executives and producers went to a similar class, but the word on the blackboard was J-O-L-T-S. "Shock 'em and keep shocking 'em and you'll get great ratings," their teacher said. "Don't tell them about life. They don't want to know. Keep 'em dumb and twitching."

Thank you for a fine article, Ms. Havrilesky.