TV

It’s been around longer than I’ve been alive (41 years) and still going strong, in fact now available in HD.  For the purpose of this blog, I’ll include cable TV, not simply broadcast.  Here are my thoughts.

 B&W.  Plenty of TV shows from the mid-60s and early were originally in black & white, but I recall us having a small black & white TV in the guest bedroom in the 70s.  Europe switched over in the 70s to color TV, with Romania and Albania being the last (1978).  I can’t really think of many early 60s and earlier TV shows I really cared for – including “The Honeymooners”.

 Cable.  Growing up in the 70s, we knew NO ONE who had this.  In fact, we were unaware it even existed until the early 80s and MTV.  By far, MTV is what put cable TV on the map.  This was back when they actually played music videos (if anyone can remember that).  I was never that impressed by HBO, though the new Pacific series has me vaguely tempted.

 FOX & UHF.  Back in the 70s, there was no “FOX”.  We just had the big three: ABC, NBC, and CBS.  There were various UHF channels, plus PBS.  PBS mainly gave us “Sesame Street” and “The Electric Company”, and also showed “Benny Hill” and other British shows.  The UHF channels mainly showed offbeat movies.  The prevailing wisdom was that no one could compete with the big three.  WRONG.   Fox gave us “Married With Children” and “The Simpsons” and has been going strong since then.  

 Game Shows.  I prefer “Jeopardy”.  I like to play along at home.  If I don’t know the answer, I’ll come up with something.  “He invented mustard.” “Who is...Madonna?”  The “$64,000 Pyramid” was also damn good.  Sometimes I wonder if the point of “Let’s Make A Deal” was specifically to ridicule and lampoon game show contestants – “Jerry Springer”, ahead of its time.

 Sit-Coms.  Usually these are stupid beyond words.  But “Two and a Half Men” is hilarious, despite its dull and unoriginal premise.  Is it my imagination, or did the sit-coms get duller and more wholesome in the 80s?  I’m thinking of “Family Ties”, “Growing Pains”, “Full House”, all those family shows with annoying little morals and squeaky clean kids.  Not that “Roseanne” was really any better.  Back in the 70s, the shows were more cerebral and pretentious: “The Odd Couple”, “Rhoda”, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (check her out in the opening credits wearing a purple Vikings jersey, #10!).

 Soap Operas.  Daytime, I never watch – usually I’m at work anyway.  These are clearly for people who stay at home during the day.  I am catching up on “Dallas”, and follow “Desperate Housewives” (as mentioned earlier).

 Late Night.  First there was Johnny Carson.  ZZZ – humor for the WWII generation, of which I’m not.  Leno, in that respect, was a big improvement (plus he’s a huge car guy).  Letterman I never liked: he’s an uptight doofus pretending to be a cool guy.  Conan is probably the best of the three, very real but funny.  And remember Arsenio Hall?  Or Chevy Chase?

 TV nonstop.   I am not one of those people who watches it nonstop, putting it on as soon as I get home from work and leaving on all the time, even while I sleep.  I watch it when I have something I want to watch.

 “Reality” TV.  Whether it’s “Jerry Springer” or “Survivor”, I zone out.   What annoys me about the “Survivor” shows is that it’s 30% “actual survival” and 70% “stupid office intrigues, personality conflicts, ratting people out”, things of that nature which never interest me.  The same with “Biggest Loser”, which seems at least as much of this backstabbing and personality conflicts as about... losing weight?

 Drama.  I tend to ignore most of these.  I don’t watch “Grey’s Anatomy”, any “CSI” or “NCIS” show where they cleverly solve all sorts of crimes with advanced technology.  Give me “CSI LONDON 1888” where clever Scotland Yard detectives FINALLY tell us who Jack the Ripper was.  And please bring back “Life on Mars”.

 Crime/Cops.  I never watched “Miami Vice”.  I wasn’t really into “Starsky & Hutch” (though the car was cool), “Knight Rider” (it was on when I was in France, I only got into after I bought my black Firebird), “Baretta”, “Mannix”, “Hill Street Blues” (talk about a bewildering array of characters on that one), “The Rockford Files”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, etc.

 Sports.  Usually I watch NFL and soccer (including the World Cup).  I ignore most of the Olympics, ESPN, baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis – and GOLF is dull to watch, only marginally less dull to play.  I’ve finally got RedZone, but haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.  But I am not one of these guys who zones out in front of the TV for a game, which during football season would be 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Sunday, with a break between the end of the 4 p.m. game and the beginning of the Sunday night game for dinner + Monday Night Football.

 HD.   FINALLY I got an HD TV, and scroll down past channel 702 to get all the HD channels.  The resolution is astonishing.  It simply has to be seen to be believed.

 The Best.  If I had to name the best, I’d say here are a few:

“Two and a Half Men”.  Charlie Sheen plays Charlie Harper, a jingle writer, single with no kids.  His brother Alan (John Cryer), is a divorced chiropractor who moves in with Charlie after his wife Judith kicks him out.  He has a young son (the same actor all this time).  The humor is astonishingly adult for a sit-com, and Sheen’s real life is mercilessly ridiculed. 

 “My Name is Earl”.  Quality insanity from Jason Lee.  He’s got this list, see?  And he has to keep crossing off the bad things he’s done and make up for them, one by one.  His brother Randy isn’t too bright, his ex-wife Joy clearly uses those white trash bags, but the latina maid is very hot.  I like the odd mix of low-class & deep philosophy.

 “M*A*S*H”.  I’ve already gone on about this at length.

 “Friends” was OK. I got into this because it came on after “Seinfeld”, and continued to watch it after “Seinfeld” ended, following it until this show itself ended.  With “My Name is Earl” gone, Thursday night is basically “The Office”, which while good doesn’t compel me to set aside the evening for TV.

 The Office.  No laugh track, simply humorous situations, particularly Michael Scott (Steve Carell) who is (of course) consistently unintentionally funny, which is the whole point.  I loved the one where Dwight (Rainn Wilson) “catches” Oscar playing hookie, oblivious to Oscar’s much more controversial secret, his special friend (!).  Or when Michael is unaware he’s wearing a suit designed for Hillary Clinton.

 “The Simpsons”.  Remarkably, this has not “jumped the shark” (peaked) but is still getting better.  Matt Groening is the Steven Spielberg of TV.  I don’t know how they keep coming up with new ideas, but somehow they do it.

 “Seinfeld”.  This show was fantastic.  You never knew what was going to happen, it was completely unpredictable.  And they would run with stuff – George didn’t lose his Yankees job in the next episode, nor did Elaine’s job with Peterman fizzle out by the end of the episode.  About the only thing you could predict is that whatever idiotic scheme Kramer and Newman had, it would end up badly. 

 “South Park”. Winding up the three S-shows.  Although it can be extremely offensive at times, Parker and Stone leave you wondering: did they deliberately try to mess with us, or is this just their twisted sense of humor?  No one is tackling delicate and controversial issues more directly and more humorously.  And this is a crudely animated cartoon show about 4 10 year olds in Colorado.  Sad to say it, but “Family Guy” – as clever and funny as Seth McFarlane may be – is simply a tagalong copycat.