Well, in comedy, at least,the characters are generally worse than Aristotle's average. But I meant not that t.v. represents cultural reality in its depiction of characters but is a cultural reality itself. It's handy to know some for reference. As I said on another thread, the better efforts tend to fail because nobody watches them. And many people thought literature was escapist garbage long ago, and they were mostly correct. The good stuff grows out of the mud.

Why should anyone want to stay in touch with cultural reality? To help you communicate with people you find hard to relate to, so you can share the good you know with them, and be surprised once in awhile that there's more to them than you'd have guessed. To be an open sort of person, is my reason. But maybe I just have to make an effort, and it comes more naturally to other people.