'The Family on TV' is not a progressive show (and it's really sad that you're trying to sell it to us that way).

A friend of a friend of my father had a pile of dirty magazines that looked like that ugly tower they have on the beach in Barcelona ; there were all kinds and names, some that ring a bell, like Primera Línea , I think FHM (please forgive me for not being very familiar with offset -format erotica, but I'm from 2000) – and, of course, the legendary Interviú . I remember one day, as a kid, finding the tower in a room that had a huge Scalextrix set up on the floor (he wasn't a normal guy, I know that) I asked him, with all my pre-adolescent mischief, why he kept so many old magazines with naked women.

The answer he gave me—I promise you it's true, even if it sounds like a cheap stereotype—was that he didn't like them because of the perky breasts the precarious models showed off, but because of the incredibly interesting reports they included. That's right. I, a pubescent boy of about ten years old, you see, was from a generation that sadly had access to the internet and porn very early on—we were given computers in fifth grade through a regional government program called Classroom 2.0.—and I had no moral authority whatsoever that would prompt me to judge anyone consuming that kind of content. However, I remember being quite annoyed that he took me for a complete idiot and, in a very ironic way, used that excuse that I don't think even my dog ​​Ariel would believe.

Well, these days, with the arrival of 'La familia de la tele' on TVE, I'm feeling something very similar.

If you're even a little familiar with the narrative that's been used to sugarcoat the already jinxed program—poor things, they can't get the dates right—you'll see that it's built on the idea that it's a progressive format, since, supposedly, it distances the tabloid press from the usual aristocracies and brings it closer to the people. In fact, you'll also see that this veneer of alleged progressivism doesn't come so much from the official channels of RTVE 's communications team as from various voices within its circle: I've already read quite a few influencers, journalists, columnists, and public figures from the left praising 'La familia de la tele' as a "necessary" product, one that "was already needed on public television."

Do you know what they remind me of? All those cultural critics who, when they have to review a friend's book they can't find a single virtue in, can only say, "It's a story that needed to be told." That punchline is usually the perfect indicator that a novel, to be gentle, isn't the best in the world.

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This smoke disguised as a scam has been inflating my morale for days, not only as a consumer and taxpayer, but also as a progressive—I'll let you call me woke, go on, you love it. Is this really all they can come up with to sneak the natural heir of Sálvame into the schedule of a public television network that, let's not forget, is still a media outlet with institutional duties? Do they find the format so inappropriate that they must try to convince us it's a progressive program , even though we still don't know why?

Look, I'm not going to judge the morality of a program because I couldn't care less. If the RTVE team thinks this approach can revive La 1's afternoon programs and get good ratings , that's great. There's so much trash on public television —even on regional television—that they're taking us for ten-year-olds—not even that—if they think any viewer with half a brain is going to believe the story that it's a progressive format. No way.

Here, we're all of a certain age and old enough to consume whatever we want, whether it's junk or not, without twenty-dollar excuses to try to clear our consciences. I love a video game that I've been addicted to for weeks called Fortnite . It's about shooting other players on a small island until only one remains standing, and it's designed for sixteen-year-olds. Am I making up my mind that I play it to stay connected with young people and that, since the pace of the battle pushes you to form battalions, it's a product that encourages teamwork ?

Well, no, man, it's a game I like, period. We all have guilty pleasures. We've all laughed at a Santiago Segura film, or watched Fast and Furious , or read The Da Vinci Code , or listened to Anuel AA's latest album without pretending it's a progressive and necessary cultural product. We like things that are light, fluid, and cost-effective. We love those AI-powered brain-dead memes, the crocodile bomber ones, and we don't make up mental excuses to consume them. We're self-confident; we understand that we're no more idiotic than our neighbor for not investing all our time in cultivating our synaptic connections with fine, progressive, and high-level art. I can read a Galdós book in the afternoons and watch a great Memphis Grizzlies-Oklahoma City Thunder playoff game at night, or even put on the latest episode of "La familia de la tele" while I get drunk.

The new TVE show isn't progressive. And that's fine. Or not. Well, it's neither good nor bad: it doesn't matter at all. The only thing I ask, though, is that they don't try to sell it to us as a flagship of progress, because we all have memories here and we know what Sálvame was.