I like good writing. When I called this blog, Eat, Read and Be Harried, I figured I’d be writing mostly about books. When I think of the boxes into which I can put myself, reader is way up near the top of the list, somewhere after the mom box and before the baseball fan box.

But good writing isn’t just in books. I’m a fan of well-written movies, even if they have lousy acting. Not a huge fan, but I can recognize good writing even when the acting is wooden, or the direction is bad, or — as with nearly every Japanese film I’ve seen — the music is so horrendous it intrudes on the movie itself.

So here’s a kudos to the people who write Friday Night Lights. Brian Grazer and Peter Berg do an outstanding job, week after week and season after season. Sure, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton are fabulous, too. But they do it with the backing of truly believable scripts.

Here’s what I don’t get: how is it that a show like that has to struggle to find an audience? Why do shows like Sports Night get cancelled while drek like The Hills, featuring some of the most vapid people on the face of the earth is renewed, and is more popular than something edifying? I really want to know why people will watch season after season of The Bachelor. Is it because finding true love and making out with 20 people on TV is what, entertaining? Is it a voyeuristic pleasure that can’t be found in on-line porn? Are the people on it so akin to the people you interact with daily? Do their dates compare to yours? Do you believe that this time, someone really will find true love in those circumstances? It’s happened, what, once in all the times it’s aired.

Why do people suffer through mediocre writing in shows like The Middle or that show that Kelsey Grammer did after Frasier ended whose name I can’t remember? Why do studio executives keep these shows on the air, and make new ones just as fair-to-middling as they are when something as well-received as Friday Night Lights has to make a deal with a satellite company just to stay afloat?

I know it all comes down to money for the studios. So I’m back to America: why do you watch crap? Why don’t you watch the good stuff that’s out there? I really want to know. It’s not like Friday Night Lights isn’t entertaining — it’s gripping. There are pretty people to look at, but their characters live real lives and say real things. There’s plot. Sometimes there’s action. Characters develop. Sometimes they have bad hair days.

And if you want good TV that’s about people who aren’t like us and who have fabulous clothes and no bad hair days, well there’s good writing for those shows, too. Chuck comes to mind. And Trauma, which has the fabulously sexy Kiwi Cliff Curits in a riveting show about alarmingly attractive EMTs. Why suffer through Gary Unmarried or even American Idol when you have other choices?

You could even expand your geographic horizons and see what other countries get to watch. Being Human is on BBC America again this summer, featuring an earthbound ghost, a werewolf and a reformed vampire all trying to get along. The vampire is to die for cute. There’s the Canadian show Being Erica which was shown for two seasons on Soapnet and is still available to see on the website.

Seriously, don’t settle for good writing only when it comes to books. Demand that the stuff you watch be well-written, too. There are so many deserving writers out there (ahem) who are dying to see their work published. Let’s do a little social engineering here: stop feeding bad writers and support the good ones. Their lives will be better, your mind will expand. Who knows, maybe it will cure cancer or bring about world peace. It is as likely to happen from good writing as from a Miss USA contestant trying to utter a few coherent sentences about it, right? .