Last week, open impeachment hearings investigating President Donald J. Trump began in the U.S. House of Representatives and were televised for the nation to see. Let me repeat that: hearings to determine whether to impeach the president of the United States, to decide whether or not he committed a "high crime or misdemeanor" and leveraged foreign aid to get information on a political opponent began and were televised nationwide.

It's a big deal.

Acting Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent, and the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, all delivered damning testimony against Donald Trump. Taylor testified under oath that he understood Trump to have sought the now-infamous Ukrainian quid pro quo arrangement. Former U.S. ambassador Marie Yovanovitch chronicled how she had felt personally threatened by the president.

And yet a common critique from pundits across the political spectrum is that the hearings were... boring? The hearings might have been important (unless you ask Fox News), but committed the cardinal sin of not being fascinating TV.

I'm interested in what people who think these hearings are dull are looking for exactly — the president to storm in mid-question and yell "I did it!"? A Kardashian-style catfight in the middle of the House of Representatives? Jim Jordan to lose his actual mind. (OK, yeah, that one makes sense.)

The point of these hearings is not so the American people can tune into real-life reality TV show entertainment, it is to determine whether or not the leader of the free world leveraged his authority to get dirt on a former vice president who is campaigning against him.

How is that not dramatic enough?

We have already started to treat cable news like reality TV, and it is making us all stupider. CNN has panel after panel of people screaming at each other with no clear point. MSNBC and Fox both chronicle impeachment like a real-world soap opera, although with polar-opposite narratives in which the president is either clearly guilty and getting what's coming to him or the courageous savior of American values unfairly wrapped up in a coup by the terrifying duo of Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff.

The thing is that the drama shouldn't be the point.

American politics are already dramatic, we shouldn't be faulting a hearing of all things for not modeling an episode of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" or the soap opera impeachment parody from this past Saturday's episode of SNL. The American people deserve an impeachment probe that is substantive, clear, and informative. Everything else is already dramatic enough.