If you were looking for a TV show that reflected today's hard economic times, perhaps a show about a struggling city bus driver, a junk dealer and his son or a hard-pressed family in which both parents work, you would have to find old episodes of "The Honeymooners," "Sanford & Son" and "Roseanne," respectively.
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What you're more apt to find today are series in which the main characters fret about which designer dress they'll be wearing to the thousand-dollar ball or reality shows in which the main drama might be how many expensive options to load into a million-dollar yacht purchase.
At a time of recession in the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, TV makes it look as if everyone in America is filthy rich.
Gone are the days of sitcoms reflecting middle-class lives (or sitcoms altogether, some people would say). Every character lives in a glitzy home that would seem well beyond his or her means. Others live in homes well beyond our dreams in what otherwise would be high school stories in "Gossip Girl," "90210" or "Privileged." As bankruptcies take a huge jump, why not organize another edition of "The Apprentice," in which people aspire to be Donald Trump? Why not depict a fictional family that is the richest in the country in "Dirty Sexy Money"?
If you can still afford your cable bill, there are the real-life excesses of "The Real Housewives of Orange County," in which Vicki Gunvalson was the one considering getting a satellite TV dish for a $1 million yacht.
This on a network, Bravo, that seems to think the rich are the most fascinating of all in shows such as "Flipping Out," "The Rachel Zoe Project," "Million Dollar Listing" and "Millionaire Matchmaker." When Fox dabbled in reality shows with "millionaire" in the title, it usually resulted in the most extreme shows, from "Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire" to the notorious "Joe Millionaire," where, in the final reveal, there was no million dollars.
Fox was back in the millionaire business last month, with the short-term series "Secret Millionaire." But even on a show where the supposed goal was to emphasize the gap between the very rich and the very poor, there were moments that could stop you dead in your tracks, as when one multimillionaire bragged about thinking nothing of dropping $4,000 to $5,000 on a dinner with friends.
At some point, in a time of recession, such opulence can make you sick.
To be sure, some of these series with the richest characters are on the way out. "Cashmere Mafia" didn't last a season on ABC, where "Dirty Sexy Money" is about to go, and the well-to-do lawyers on "Boston Legal" are already gone (although they had a good run). "Lipstick Jungle" looks to be on the verge of cancellation at NBC.
Many are still around, though. The best examples of economic struggles can be found in the most ambitious cable shows, where "Breaking Bad" had a chemistry teacher doing desperate things to provide for his family in a time of cancer, or "Sons of Anarchy," where a motorcycle gang traded arms for money. But more often, families are depicted living apparently above their means on shows such as "Two and a Half Men" and "Samantha Who?"
No one is doing quite so well as teens in their spectacular apartments on "Gossip Girl," where couture fashion is de rigueur and the next charity ball is just around the corner. (Even the "poor" family in the series would have had to spend millions for its loft in Brooklyn, N.Y.)
Two other serials on the CW have a similar formula of the young cavorting on the playgrounds of the rich: in Beverly Hills in the remake of "90210" and in Palm Beach on "Privileged." "I think a lot of people are interested in the rich," Jeff Judah, producer of "90210," told critics in July. "There's something interesting in seeing these big worlds and also seeing these people in a different way and on an emotional level suffer the same way that every one of us do, struggling to get through the day."
Also, said Lori Loughlin, one of the actresses on the show, "there is some fantasy to it for America to watch because it's the glitz and the glamour of L.A. that we don't often see in our everyday lives when we're living in the Midwest somewhere."
Dawn Ostroff, entertainment president at the CW, compares it to the days of "Dynasty" and "Dallas."
"Those shows were all very popular back in a time when there was a very similar financial climate in the country," she said. "When the country goes through times like these ... having entertainment be escapist is what our viewers look for."
"It's not that we sat down and said, 'Oh, we just want to tell stories of rich people,'" said Stephen McPherson, president of entertainment at ABC, the year "Dirty, Sexy Money" joined its lineup alongside the longer-lived "Big Shots." Having rich people on TV might be presented as "kind of a fantasy," McPherson said. "And to some extent, some of that is making fun of those people."
The excesses of the fashion world in "Ugly Betty" for instance, are offset by the working-class family from which its character Betty Suarez emerged.
"The Suarez family, to me, is a fantastic American middle-class, if not working-class, family," McPherson said. The family at the head of "Brothers & Sisters" has had its struggles with the business, as well, he said.
And "'Desperate Housewives,' to me," McPherson said, "is about every neighborhood in the USA."
In the world of reality, teens have been following the well-to-do world of Lauren Conrad and her pals on MTV, first on "Laguna Beach," and then on "The Hills." Last week, another offshoot started on the East Coast, "The City," following fashion careerist Whitney Port, who somehow can afford a new designer dress to wear every day on her new job.
The new show came alongside "Bromance." In that series, Brody Jenner (who, like another famous guy on "The Hills," Spencer Pratt, doesn't seem to have any fixed job at all) holds a competition much like one Paris Hilton recently did on the network. He seeks to pick a friend with whom to share his life of partying, girls and cars, a lifestyle that clearly dazzles its contestants.
Most such reality competitions, from "America's Next Top Model" to "A Double Shot at Love," begin with a giddy run through the lavish mansion where they all will live.
On "Double Shot," the contestants literally were dropped to the mansion site in wooden crates, a throwback to the humiliations marathon dancers had to endure in the Depression to get their own riches.
But during the Depression, such signs of wealth in entertainment were seen clearly as alluring escapist fare. It was best represented in Busby Berkeley's rows of dancing girls awash in glittering coins in a famous number in "The Gold Diggers of 1933," when they sang, despite everything, "We're in the Money."
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