“TV rots your brains.”

I heard that phrase all the time growing up. I was a kid, and the people saying it were all bigger and older and presumably smarter than me. So I assumed it was true, watched less TV than most kids my age, and felt appropriately guilty whenever I did watch it.

I’m not a kid anymore. In fact, I’m approaching an age when not even my old man, who sees anyone not pulling Social Security as a kid, would deign to call me a kid. Now I’m the one passing judgment and inflicting my crotchety “wisdom” on the neighborhood. And I say to you, It’s Not True.

First, “brains” shouldn’t be plural. Second, TV gets a bad rap because of the way people abuse it. Mindlessly watching hour after consecutive hour of TV is bad. Using it as a babysitter and/or a substitute for spending real time with your children is bad. Watching Jersey Shore, Dancing With The Stars or Real Housewives of Wherever-The-Hell may actually make you dumber. But while there are definitely more turds on TV than gems, there are a decent number of shows that don’t trigger my programmed “Turn it off before all your brains leak out” response.

In January, I saw a trailer for NBC’s Awake: what looked like an exciting variation on the crime procedural. A homicide detective survives a terrible car crash, but is afterwards unable to discern dreams from reality. In one reality, his wife died in the crash; in the other, his son died. Rather than try to determine which world is real, he tries to maintain them both. He finds that his murder cases in one often intrude on the other, and that carrying his investigations into the other world gives him an advantage.As a fan of Fringe, I thought Awake sounded like an amazing concept, and couldn’t wait to see it. But almost as soon as the trailer aired, critics began voicing skepticism that it would fail, claiming it was “too smart for TV.”

I reject that claim. Awake hasn’t met the unreasonable hopes I had for it, but it’s a smart, well-written show with great actors and a lot of subtlety. Plot devices tie each story together well, and changes in lighting and cinematography differentiate one world from the other.

If Awake fails, it’s because NBC failed to market it to the right audience. Yes, some shows famously dumb down their stories so that people can talk over them, wash the dishes, or chase the 2-year-old and still follow along. Or maybe they just assume that the American viewer is as dumb as a box of rocks. And some of these shows get the ratings. But there are also shows like The Good Wife, The Killing, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc. that ditch the cliches and show us what TV can do. Fox made the mistake of a lifetime when they rejected a pilot based on Joe Hill/Gabriel Rodriguez’s graphic novel Locke & Key. They’ve been screening the pilot at Comic-Cons around the country since then, leaving fans shaking their fists and gnashing their teeth at the missed opportunity.

As someone who enjoys creative writing, the best thing I can do to improve is read the work of great writers. For years I didn’t watch TV at all, and proudly. But now I try to be a little more diverse in what I take in. Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club, Rant) is a great writer, but so is Scott Snyder (graphic novel American Vampire), so is Joss Whedon (feature films Cabin In The Woods, The Avengers), and so are Michelle and Robert King (The Good Wife). All these people are incredible storytellers, and I’d be an idiot to miss any of their work because of their chosen medium or genre.

But Jersey Shore rots your brains.