For me, being a regular viewer of a network TV show is like being a child growing up in a family destined for divorce. My earliest, hazy memories from the start of a show’s run are of happy times where everyone got along and I always knew what to expect. Just as I’m starting to revel in how lucky I am to have parents that love each other so much, Mommy starts complaining about the amount of money Daddy brings home. Daddy starts saying that if Mommy would just stop criticizing every little decision he ever made, maybe he’d have a little confidence at work now and then. The fighting gets worse—Mommy starts comparing Daddy’s salary to the neighbors in our timeslot and saying that if she’d married one of those other shows that wanted her like her mother told her too, she wouldn’t have to cover all our empty commercial breaks with all those cheap, ugly Public Service Announcements. One day, Mommy kicks Daddy out and I have to go to some strange night and time once a week to visit him. He starts crying all the time, saying how much he loved Mommy and if she’d only give him another chance, he’d show her he could do better. But Mommy doesn’t seem to care; right away there’s a new man in our house and she wants me to call him Daddy. He’s always trying win me over with derivative drama, scatological humor, or groups of “regular people” undermining and cheating one another for a cash prize of some sort. But it doesn’t work. He’s just too gross. I hate New Daddy. But Mommy won’t leave him, no matter what I say. So I run away to shack up with a series of short-seasoned cable shows full of course language and nudity because they’re never on long enough at time for me to get attached enough to have my heart broken again.
So it’s networks like you, Fox Broadcasting, that have scarred me for life. After you cancelled ‘Arrested Development’” last week I thought it was my fault at first—maybe if I had been a better viewer, maybe if I was like viewers on other shows, the divorce wouldn’t have happened and Mommy and Daddy would still love each other. But my new premium-channel friends told me truth, Fox Broadcasting—you never cared about me at all! It didn’t matter what I did to please you, how many Simpsons DVD box sets I bought. You never wanted the kind of viewer that likes Arrested Development in the first place! I was a mistake—don’t try to say I wasn’t. Well, guess what? I don’t care about you anymore, either. I’m through with your boring old ratings and creepy love of Mom-swapping. I’ll stop by when I need something—an episode of 24 maybe—but I’ll never expect you to understand me. I’ve got a new family now, one that gets me. HBO’s taking me to get a tattoo tomorrow, and there’s nothing you can do about it!