TV is cool

Alright, maybe you are on the “TV is the devil” side, and that is ok.  Just stop reading now.  There is a certain sector of the civilized world that turns their nose up at television, like it’s a dirty toy the neighbor-kid found in a puddle and promptly stuffed it in his mouth.  I have been in conversations earlier this year where one or two of the participants declared “I don’t even own a television.”  Fine.  Be that way.  I don’t care.  (Side note:  One of these people also didn’t realize the Arab Spring was occurring.  *shudder*)

Even if you think television is only for the uneducated sheeple, I am still going to watch.  There are diamonds in the rough, don’t you know?  I still read books.  Big books, sometimes, with large multisyllable words.  Because of that, I also feel good about watching television when I so choose.

I don’t watch a lot of television in the summer.  Summers are too short in Montana to waste a single ray of sun.  Once Fall rolls around, and the new seasons of serial dramas and comedies starts up, I dust off the butt-imprint on the couch and plop in, wielding the remote.

I’m choosy about which crap I tune into…I don’t want to see anything with “Real” in the title.  If a TV show has “Real” anywhere in the title, you know it’s bad.  I accidentally caught a few minutes of Jersey Shore once, and I felt woozy.  I can’t stomach that particular show.  It would only make my rage issues worse.  Rage issues…that’s another post!

Since I am still in a blog-funk, I thought a nice idea for a post was to come here to Binary Trash and talk about the shows I am tuning in to this season, and which ones I tried out, though we didn’t work out.  I picked out this year’s shows and listed them for you here.  All I need is a new ice scraper for my windshield and I am all set for the long-ass winter.  See how I used a literary term like “long-ass?”  I told you TV wasn’t making me stupider.

Two Broke Girls

This is a cheesy comedy chock-full of bad accents and stupid scenarios.  I think I like it because the main waitress-chick with the dark hair is who I would want to be if I lived a poor, waiterly existence in the city.  The blond girl, the “daughter of a jailed Ponzi-scheme ex-billionaire” is a perfect balance to the rest of the restaurant.  I can even suspend reality enough to buy that Blondie brought her horse Chestnut to live in the backyard of their apartment.  I’m hoping it doesn’t get canceled, but how long can this show last?  Once the girls open up their dream cupcake cafe, what story is left to tell?

The New Girl

I heart Zoeey.  That is all.

The Big Bang Theory

I’ve been hanging with the Fab Four and Penny since the beginning.  I can never decide which of them I like best.  Sheldon?  Sure, but everyone likes Sheldon.  Raj?  He’s ok.  Walowitz?  Makes me want to wash my hands after he talks.  That leaves Leonard, but he’s just so normal.  I guess I pick Amy Farrah-Fowler.

Pan Am

So far, it’s off to a glitzy start.  I was about to turn it off and check out, but the Big Sister Stewardess is an undercover operative for an intelligence agency?  Now I’m just curious.  Also, I hate flying, so it’s fun to watch an era where getting on a plane was a glamorous thing to do.  I want to tell the characters to enjoy the ride, because in just a few decades it’s gonna be all Ziploc bags and unwanted body cavity searches.

Survivor “23”

Jeff Probst doesn’t age.  What’s up with that?

Jeff Probst, 2001

Jeff Probst, 2011

House

I think this needs to be the last season of House.  He’s done it all.  Marry him off, let him break his Vicodin addiction, and let it all be happier ever after.  I’m very invested in this show having watched from Season 1, so I can’t quit now, can I?

Modern Family

Funniest on TV right now, if you ask me.  The cast is a magical happy group that has the perfect sense of timing.  It’s so well done that it makes me secretly hope the actors all hate each other in real life.

Person of Interest

Jim “Jesus” Caviezel and Michael Emerson.  Kind of a Minority Report meets CSI meets…I don’t know, I just lost my train of thought.  So far it seems like an original idea.  A post-911 Big Brotherish invention spits out the Social Security numbers of a person who is going to be involved in a major criminal act…it’s Jesus’s…I mean Jim’s job to figure out whether the number belongs to the victim or the perp…and stop the act of badness before it happens.  So much packed into one hour…so much…

Terra Nova

A totally believable show about a family in the future who, against all odds, ventures together through a giant glowing portal back to the late Cretaceous period, where a well-oiled machine of a commune is “starting over” under the lead of the mean jerk from Avatar. They have to start over, because they effed up the future so bad that no one can even breathe without one of those masks you get at the hardware store.  Plus there are dinosaurs, and large centipedes, and unusual symbols cropping up on the rocks near the waterfall…uh-oh, I smell crazy hijinks!

Twenty millon for the pilot and all I got was this lousy T-shirt!

Grey’s Anatomy

I hate myself a little more every Thursday, because try as I might, I just can’t quit you, Grey’s.  You have long become tiresome with your dialogue and your Featured Artist musical selections.  Your characters have all slept with each other several times over.  Everyone on the show has died once or twice, at least.  I cringe every time ABC announces a Very Special Grey’s Anatomy Event, because I know I will watch it.  I hope that you end soon.  And no more spinoffs.  Just go to that big ER in the sky, and please tell Shonda Rhimes to retire.  It’s over.

Those poor bastards keep getting killed off, sucks to be them!

KXLF 5:30 News

I try to never, ever miss the local news.  I LOVE Bozeman, MT news.  It’s more entertaining than all of the shows I just mentioned, put together.  See, here in Montana, you never know when a friend or a relative is going to appear on the local news.  They might be walking by in the background, or they might be the head story.  You might see their dented, maimed vehicle overturned in the ditch, with a close up of their beer can still in the coozy, circled on the pavement as evidence (True story).  All this, plus an untold number of misspellings and video/audio snafus.  At least once a week, they announce “here’s the highlights from the local Belgrade Panthers football victory” but cut to a guy in an orange jumpsuit standing in the local courtroom, stuff like that.  Or they will break for commercial, except they keep talking amongst themselves and no commercial happens but the cameraman must be an intern, so we get to hear about their wife and kids, et cetera.  I guess true art can’t be scripted, or contained to just twenty minutes plus advertising.

Well, you know where I will be this winter.  I hope you have plans, too.