God I wish Shakespeare was alive in order to do something tv

The idea behind a show evolving i actually find suspect. This probably has to do with the fact that only on specific occasions do I find the format integral to an artists conception. (Usually its integral to tv makers but I rarely think tv makers are artists.) To me, to keep a show popular you gotta have a really cool "depth-like" facade. In relation to Breaking Bad, a show constantly praised and advertized mind you (there's an implicit process here in my opinion) for the way it evolves, I think this aspect of the show makes people think they are watching great art, but they aren't. This is a show who's only relevancy is how well done it is, i.e. how good the acting is, how suspenseful it is, lean without pretension, never falling for the pitfalls that other shows fall into (you can do this by simply being superficially different from other shows) and how characters don't fall into the pifalls of being stagnant for the sake of keeping the format and retaining the franchise. Now, like I said on rare exception do I find that tv is truly great, and a Whedon or a Simon show gains from evolving, but that's because this is their process and it works superlatively. (It's also because their shows are art and benefit from the elongated format of tv-they can break franchise convention precisely because their story benefits from the elongated tv format. Why should Buffy be stagnant?) However, what if you never had much of a show to begin with? Well that's most "quality" television. So you deceive your audience and yourself into believing that this is great television precisely because it evolves. Does it truly evolve or does it just change and rot, or merely constantly hit different spots not on the dart board? If you're on the board why change it up? Particularly if your show is good but not great? Remember good tv shows? Their basicness was appealing in that they weren't claiming they were anything else other than what they truly were, and what they were were pretty good shows-shows that made you believe in the medium not as the greatest art form ever but simply as a good art form that could surprise you in sometimes pulling the rug out from under you and giving you quality. They didn't lie into telling you that there's some great arc that you need to pay attention to-i.e. stick around and keep watching us. They said, stick around and watch for the good amid the bad, which in the end is the ultimate aspect of the medium. A good show wasn't a conception but simply something that you liked watching because of what it represented at its core, not as a complete entity. As a complete entity it was messy with infrequent tonalities of quality and consistency-it was television. Television now doesn't try to be television-its television in the guise of greatness. Now you're probably saying that I'm unfair in that I don't want people to like Mad Men or Breaking Bad, ect. It's not that I want them to not like the shows, it's that I want people to simply admit that they liked a certain show for basic reasons like they like watching so and so every week or they like the atmosphere or what the show represents and does for you-not try to legitimize their reaction with platitudes about the incredible depth of the show. The X Files is not a show of any great depth but I enjoy the Hell out of it. Breaking Bad is not a show of any great depth but it sure as Hell pretends to be, and I sure as Hell don't enjoy it. (It's indicative of unenjoyable non-depth like shows that they have to claim they have depth because they have nothing else going for em. The same is true of all art.) If I was Chris Carter, I sure as Hell would be pissed off right about now because his success looks dowdy next to these towering infernos.