Television smarts

In Dana Stevens’s article “Think Outside the Idiot Box” Stevens directly criticizes Steven Johnson several times for his claims in his article “Watching TV Makes You Smarter.” Johnson says in his article that watching television makes people smarter by shows involving intricate plot lines that people have to follow in order to make sense of the program. Stevens argues against this when she says a show like 24 “discourages them from thinking too much about the vigilante ethic it portrays” (Stevens 232). What Stevens is saying is that while the show 24 may educate audiences somewhat of what other countries and peoples are like, there is plenty more that the show is leaving out, therefore educating its audiences in a biased way. Stevens also criticizes Johnson for excluding other present day televised shows, while he mainly focuses on the Sopranos and 24, Stevens argues there are plenty of dumbed down shows on air today which do not at all make people smarter.
To me, the more persuasive of the two arguments is Johnson. What he does to the reader is make him think about the present day shows and the shows that were on in the 80s in a very funny way. He proves with this diagrams that shows such as Starsky and Hutch were not complex at all in story telling , but very linear and unimaginative. Johnson also shows that many shows today are related to the culture we live in or we hear about. Even dumbed down televised shows may include a reference to something that is huge and smartly put together the way the line is delivered. Stevens argument, while being valid at times, is nothing but a bashing of what she thought was right at the time. Even in her article she says it had only been a day since Johnson had posted his article. What I think Stevens did was come up with what seemed like a smart argument in her head, but clearly misses the whole point Johnson was trying to get across.