Customer Reviews

Glued to the Set: The 60 Television Shows and Events That Made Us Who We Are Today

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The reviews here seem to conflict, but (aside from the Lucy corrections), they all say about the same thing and pretty accurately describe this book. It is not for people who don't want to hear about the relationship between what was on TV and what was happening in American politics and culture. And it will be an uphill read for anyone who wants to always agree with the author or who doesn't want the author to spin out some interesting speculations.

Personally, I loved this book. I started browsing it in the bookstore. Had to sit down. Read for an hour. Put it back on the shelf. Picked it up again at the bookstore the next day. Got absorbed again. Had to buy it. I found it really readable and absorbing. I love the theories: maybe SNL isn't what it's cracked up to be. Stark seems like the sort of person I'd love to have around to have long conversations with... to argue with. I like the provocation!

Don't go by how the star ratings averaged out. You can tell by these reviews whether you're the sort of person who likes this sort of thing. If you are, you'll probably love the book.

Mr. Stark has managed to capture what the whole spirit of essay-writing is about: to spark debate and seamlessly incorporate the various (and often needlessly divorced) disciplines, be it sociology, psychology, design, media, education, etc.

Many other reviewers on this democratic yet altogether newfangled 'Amazon' service have expressed displeasure at Stark's omissions and/or the marketing of the book. For those who expected a simple list of the Best Shows of All Time, you should not bother with books to begin with; yet if you persist in reading, I suggest you start with Ziauddin Sardir's essay about list and rank obsession in 'The A to Z of Postmodern Life'.

Mr. Stark's cause, I believe (and teach my students) is to provoke the very debate and discussion that has prompted both 1 and 5 star rankings. He is perhaps one of the most effective essayists of our time, for he manages to incorporate opinion, research, and a broader historical view by referencing the very (and only) things that give our American culture its ballast. Most importantly, he manages to do this without falling into the academic sophism that describes much of the current film/video literature.

This book is not meant to be about the 60 greatest shows ever to appear on television. It is not, in reality, a book about television at all, but rather about sociology. It analyzes the impact of television on American life, and, conversely, the impact of American life on television.

Bravo to Mr. Stark for writing a book which gives us much more than so many other books do in discussing television. Mr. Stark actually makes us think about its impact.

I really enjoyed reading a book that seriously examined the effects TV had and has on our lives, and reading in depth analysis of why certain shows hit it big, and why some shows are still loved today while other shows that were extremely popular in their time are now forgotten. However, I couldn't help but feeling now and then that the author sometimes just took the opposite viewpoint from everyone else in order to seem like he was not in any way a follower, or to prove how different and more insightful his viewpoints were than other TV reviewers! For example, he seems like have a much higher opinion of Home Improvement than of Seinfeld, he discounts Saturday Night Live as having had little influence on popular culture and so forth. This didn't really distract from my enjoyment of this book, however! I like to read opinions other than the mainstream ones! I also really enjoyed reading about how he picked which 60 TV events or shows to profile.

Mr. Stark has insights on television that you won't find elsewhere. He is fair and thoughtful. Although he appears to be a liberal (albeit with at least some sympathy toward cultural conservatism), you won't often find his analysis colored by party lines. He has positive things to say about Lawrence Welk, Mr. Ed and Ronald Reagan and harsh words about Masterpiece Theater, 60 Minutes and Edward R. Murrow. Moreover, he shows you why you should agree with him even if your initial reaction was quite the opposite. Many of the reviewers remarked that he would be a good person to have a conversation with. I heartily agree. I only wish that he would do a sequel. Reading this 1997 book in 2005 makes you realize just how much has changed since then.

Steven Stark has an uncanny ability to bring cultural, social and political significance to the ubiquitous mundane world of television. I took no small delight in his insights and tracings of the effects of television as an event itself, rather than merely the presentation of events.

In my own life, however, television events I felt were important were not even alluded to by Stark. To fill out that part of the picture, I write this review.

To wit:

In his discussion of Walt Disney's influence, he failed to mention all the nuclear power stuff. One significant episode involved Walt dropping a ping pong ball onto a ping-pong table covered with mousetraps and ping-pong balls, resulting in a flurry of popping traps and flying balls. This was to illustrate a nuclear reaction. For many of us impressionable youngsters, this was our first take on quantum theory and the "friendliness" of nuclear power. Stark just plain and simple missed this far-reaching segment of the television mind warp.

In his discussion of Walter Cronkite and his reputation as the "most believed man in America" he failed to note this Walt's role in putting to rest, at least in the visible media, the nagging questions surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1967 (I believe), Mark Lane's book, Rush to Judgement, and several others had rightfully pointed to the impossibility of the Warren Commission's findings. There was nightly discussion on the veracity of the report throughout the television bands and in the press. Then along came Mr. Credibility, who looked at America over the tops of his grandfatherly wire-rimmed glasses and he explained the controversy, pointing to all the anomalies. It was a hell of an expose. But in the final moments of the show--the last one of any note to address the Kennedy assassination for two decades--he simply said words to the effect, "but in the final analysis, the Warren Commission stands tall, etc., etc." This particular television event was a w! atershed event in the use of the media by renegade segments of the government to steer the public discussion away from what they were doing and had done. Mr. Credibility was in the midst of it, and Stark missed it.

A final weakness in the book is his failure to mention the program I Led Three Lives. Today I don't recall if the star was named Herbert Philbrick or if that was the main character's name. But the story line was always that dirty communists were being infiltrated by the righteous secret government agent who was working both sides and who was always in danger of being found out by the nasty commies. This show had a tremendous effect of us youngsters and set the tenor of much of the early part of our political and civic lives. When the sixties came along and higher education and notable research by scholars into the dynamics behind the Viet Nam War and the military industrial complex, the revolt was just as much against the world as presented by I Led Three Lives as it was against "people over thirty." How easy it would be, if that's all it was. But it was deeper and television was in the middle of it, setting the tone for people's lives as it is today. And alas, Stark missed it.

In conclusion, Stark can't get it all, can he? What he has done, however, is open wide the door to the critical thinking that is so necessary to detach ourselves from the intrigue and grasp of television. I just wish he had stopped to the shine his powerful light on those three of my own pet peeves.

This book is an excellent example of scholarship that is accessible and fun, and yet theoretically relevant. Anyone interested in how television or, to a broader extent, technology has shaped or been shaped by American culture and social events should read this book. You'll get some great insight, plus half of the fun is just seeing what Stark has to say about your favorite TV programs.

For the title and publisher's description of the book, I thought GLUED TO THE SET would be a reasonably enjoyable look at television programs and the culture which surrounded them. What I found was an annoying, over-blown polemic that tried desparately to locate deep sociological, demographic,and cultural trends in EVERY television show selected. The author's quest for meaning frequently stretches both the reader's credulity and patience. Just as a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, sometimes TV programs are just diversion or entertainment, and nothing more. Bob Newhart and Mr. Ed are entertainments, not cultural icons or symptons of a mass media-driven societal decline.

Having recently completed work on my late father's memoirs (LAUGHS, LUCK . . . AND LUCY: HOW I CAME TO CREATE THE MOST POPULAR SITCOM OF ALL TIME, by Jess Oppenheimer with Gregg Oppenheimer (Syracuse University Press, 1996)), I was appalled at the many factual errors author Steven Stark makes in the I LOVE LUCY chapter of GLUED TO THE SET.

For example, Stark claims that "advertisers and network executives never really seemed to like" I LOVE LUCY. The fact is that they liked the show so much that in 1953 they signed Lucy and Desi to a 98-episode, $8 million renewal contract -- the biggest ever written up to that time.

According to Stark, Lucy's "rebellious slapstick" was acceptable to mass audiences only "because its target was a Cuban immigrant." But the very reason CBS wanted to move Lucy to TV was that mass audiences had already accepted her brand of slapstick on radio, where Lucy played the similarly "rebellious" wife of a non-immigrant small town American banker.

Arguing that Ricky's ethnic background made Lucy's "rebellion" less threatening, Stark claims that "everyone -- including men -- could identify with Lucy," but "few in the audience ever mistook themselves for Desi." Not so. Whether Ricky was arguing with Lucy about their household budget, trying to teach her golf or poker, or frantically trying to get Lucy to the hospital to have her baby, generations of American husbands had no trouble identifying with him, regardless of his ethnicity.

Perhaps the most ludicrous notion advanced by Stark is that Lucille Ball, who endlessly rehearsed and perfected her scenes on I LOVE LUCY until they became timeless comedic masterpieces, never even appreciated the humor in her own performances. He quotes Lucy out of context as having once said, "I never thought that I was funny." What Lucy was referring to, of course, was not her performance, but the fact that in real life, without the benefit of her comedy writers, she simply wasn't a particularly funny person.

Stark's confusion was probably unavoidable, however, given his apparent unawareness that Lucy even HAD any writers. He explains at one point that Lucy and Desi "produced scripts" for I LOVE LUCY "loosely based on their own lives." The truth is that neither Lucy nor Desi ever wrote or collaborated on the writing of an episode of I LOVE LUCY. That task fell exclusively to Jess Oppenheimer (the show's head writer and producer), and his cowriters, Madelyn Pugh Davis, Bob Carroll, Jr., Bob Schiller, and Bob Weiskopf.

Stark's failure to acknowledge the talented team who devised Lucy's antics week after week is inexcusable. This is, after all, a commentary on I LOVE LUCY's premise, characters, themes, plots, and action, yet Stark acts as if all of these elements were ad libbed each week by the performers.

As Lucy acknowledged on more than one occasion, she was neither a comedy writer nor an ad libber. What she was was an incredible, stunning performer -- the most talented comedienne ever to grace the television screen. She appreciated, probably better than anyone else, just how funny she was on I LOVE LUCY. And she also knew what made this possible -- the superb material written for her by her writers. "I love them dearly," she once said. "I appreciate them daily, I praise them hourly, and I thank God for them every night."

It is a shame that Steven Stark, himself a writer, while acknowledging that I LOVE LUCY was "a work of genius," fails to recognize that this work first saw the light of day on the typewritten page.

- Gregg Oppenheimer
co-author, LAUGHS, LUCK . . . AND LUCY

This book was useful to me because of the detailed information it provided. I am using it to find other information on television shows I am researching. It was also entertaining to read. However, Stark would often end a section on a particular show with a stinging, negative comment. These seemed like cheap shots which he threw out, but then failed to back up. I appreciated all the information, but not the unsupported comments ending the Stark's thoughts on many of the shows.