As a person that doesn't even own a television I must say I'm always disappointed when somebody says something like "it's just tv" in order to dismiss a work.... After all, it is just a story, it is just a fairy tale, it is only a novel, it is just a picture on the wall, it is only a song, it's just a bunch of rhymes, it is only play acting, it is just a movie, and thus Kafka, Homer, Dickens, Arbus, Gershwin, Shelley, Shakespeare, or Barbara Stanwyck could all be dismissed equally, and in fact have been dismissed from time to time, for reason of frivolity or puritanism, or high-brow-ism. Either it is a good and strong work of art or it is lousy (or usually somewhere in between). In the end it is secondary where you hang it, or whether it is popular or not, or whether the work is made for a commercial medium or a mass medium or someplace hidden away in the addict, or in the corner of a church, or for a religious festival, or in a downtown loft, and only meant to be seen, or heard, or read by only a few people. What matters, in the end, is quality.
So again Happy Bloomsday! If Leopold Bloom had met Tony Soprano I would hope that Leopold's deep and amusing kindness would have won over Tony's crude cruelty, and maudlin self-pity. Leopold in New Jersey, perhaps in Hoboken would be a funny idea!
Jerry