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I Miss NBC

Tonight, I was watching television when it happened.

Nostalgia.

A peculiar kind of nostalgia.

Not for a moment, or a particular period of time in my life, but for...a network.

I realized...

I miss NBC.

I know what brought it on.  I was watching an episode of Frasier--one of my favorite television shows of all time--and I found myself trying to figure out what on television now has what shows like Frasier had:

Heart.

I came up with a few shows, but none of them are on NBC.  How funny, considering NBC pretty much owned television just a decade ago.

In high school, I was a total tv freak, and I remember being able to mark my week by the shows on NBC.

Frasier was on Tuesday, then there was Law and Order on Wednesday, Must See TV Thursday, and Saturday Night Live to close out the week.

These weren't just "good" shows.  In fact, the problem with NBC right now is that it keeps trying to figure out what constitutes a "good" show.

Truthfully, it doesn't take much to make a show "good," but what makes it special is heart.

NBC used to be full of shows about people who actually cared about each other.  Oh sure, the friends on Friends were dysfunctional, and the detectives on Law and Order would bicker, but at the end of the show, you would always come to realize that these were programs about real friends, colleagues, and families.

There's hardly any of that on NBC (or anywhere else for that matter).

When ABC revitalized itself, it did it by taking risks on shows like Desperate Housewives and Lost, but if you think about it, it also did it by focusing on stories with characters who depended on each other.  Even the campy plots of Desperate Housewives relied on the camaraderie between its four main characters to make the show work.

It's funny that NBC doesn't look at its most widely acclaimed shows--30 Rock and The Office--and see that what makes them work isn't just biting irony and edgy writing, but characters that audiences can actually grow to love.

It's sad that I have to watch reruns in order to remember why I used to love spending an evening watching television.

Still, as much as I miss NBC, I bet NBC misses NBC even more.

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