This isn’t the blue collar authenticity of Roseanne. Vomit, shit, and secretion are featured characters. Winters are dog-piss yellow and cold summers sweated and dank. The audience can practically smell the fetid marsh of its setting through the screen. It is an unapologetic discussion of urban poverty in America-raw, honest, and dark, employing humor to offset the bleakness. Showtime’s Shameless is an exception, and its depiction of the struggling class in Chicago is a most honest and accurate dissertation of urban abjection in popular culture. Television ignores the poor just as Americans do. Few shows have attempted to situate themselves in the living nightmare of poverty-the country’s quiet shame, the marginalized that the middle and upper classes don’t want to see next to the numbing comfort of Modern Family. The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men deconstructed the American Dream, while Friday Night Lights, The West Wing, and The Sopranos revelled in its lingering fantasy. On occasion we are blessed with art that entertains through consideration of American ethos. It’s not television’s responsibility to question our culture.
