Tag Archives: television

Ok, now what?

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So, I’m running out of television already.

I’m caught up on True Blood, so I’m stuck waiting for the weeklies like everyone else. And with Sookie and the boys in such a state, I can hardly manage. I’m also caught up on Hoarders, and the last episode was a cop-out where are they now episode.

We’re giving up on Burn “The A-Team” Notice, and Lever-”The A-Team”-age.

So here I am. I can’t do re-runs. Well, some shows (Big Bang Theory) tend to hold up, but most of the time they just bore me. “Yeah, I remember the joke” or “This guy got arrested last time too.”

And apparently the world of torrents is void of HGTV programs. Don’t ask me what it offered when I searched for House Hunters! (Hint: Lesbian House Hunters) – which is not the same at all.

I discovered a missing half season of Hoarders. That helps, but 6 episodes only last so long.

2010 – 2011 TV Season Sucks

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I posted last year over a year and a half ago about how much TV Chris and I watched. At the time, the list was “big” and had conflicts most every night. Here’s a recap in case you don’t click the link:

  • Monday: House, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Dirty Jobs
  • Tuesday: NCIS
  • Wednesday: Lie To Me, Lost, Life (There’s an alliterative theme there)
  • Thursday: Bones and maybe Ace Of Cakes
  • Friday: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse
  • Saturday: Cops (my weekly guilty pleasure)
  • Sunday: America’s Funniest Home Videos, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Mythbusters

Total: 17 shows watched when they air

Here’s how that list converts this year:

  • Monday: House, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother (Taped for another day), Dirty Jobs
  • Tuesday: NCIS, Glee
  • Wednesday: Lie To Me, Lost, Life (There’s an alliterative theme there)
  • Thursday: Bones and maybe Ace Of Cakes, Big Bang Theory (moved), Fringe
  • Friday: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse
  • Saturday: Cops (my weekly guilty pleasure)
  • Sunday: America’s Funniest Home Videos, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Mythbusters (taped for another day)

Total: 9 shows watched when they air, plus we download The Walking Dead, Burn Notice and Leverage.

If we need something else, we’ll try Discovery, HGTV, Food Network and sometimes other random stations. Of course there’s always The Real Estate Channel to fall back on and dream.

This TV season sucks. We haven’t picked up anything new to watch except The Walking Dead and it’s awesome, but a little rough for a Sunday night after dinner. Come on CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox. How about something decent instead of brain-dead television and reality shows?

The problem, in my humble viewer opinion, is that the networks almost ALWAYS cater to the lowest common denominator, ignoring those of us who actually enjoy thinking while watching TV. How many long running intelligent shows can you name that didn’t start to suck after a season or 2 or 3?

I’m not saying I expect the same shows to last 10+ years. That’s not always possible. LOST is an example. It was a decent show that kept you thinking, but to expect them to keep it decent and fresh for much longer would have been crazy. It had a lifespan.

Law & Order(s) and CSI type procedural shows manage because people are nuts and there’s always something fresh. They tend to focus a bit less on their recurring characters lives and focus on the external stories to keep things moving. If we had to watch Elliot & Olivia live their lives without the changing cases, we wouldn’t have 30 seasons of Law & Order: SVU. Instead we have 30 seasons of SVU, a bit of Elliot & Olivia, and a whole lot of ever changing human depravity.

I’m not saying depravity is good, so don’t get me started. I’m saying that by allowing those stories to be the focus of the show, the writers can “gently” interweave the character’s lives.

Sit coms are different. We don’t expect as much out of them. Although by the time the 90210 kids turned grey, they should have graduated from high school.

Rediscovering Life

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Chris and I took a giant step recently. One that would make some of our friends weep openly and question their ability to cope. Many couples would break up in record time if they took this step. But we have faith.

What did we do that was so drastic?

We shut our cable off for the summer.

Yep. And Novus took us seriously. About 3 weeks after the first of the month we came home to static. Last year we cut it down to the basics for the summer and it took them 2 months to make the change.

Cable companies do this for 2 reasons as far as I can tell. One is they hope you change your mind before they get here, the other is that 9/10 cancel requests are place where tenants move and they hope the new occupants will subscribe. Either way a month or two of service costs less than dispatching a warm body, so they leave it on until x amount of time passes or they “have a guy in the area.”

With TV season drawing to a close and our ability to watch shows online increasing daily, plus the impending summer weather (you hear me mother nature?) we want to try to lessen our dependence on the tube.

How’s it going? Other than the 2 – 24 hour delay in watching the 3 or 4 critical shows on TV, it’s good. Rumble gets more playtime, more work gets done, more walks get taken and Chris and I get to spend more quality time together.

Which inevitably means sitting at opposite ends of the couch ignoring each other in favor of our laptops.

I joke. That’s the scary time some other couples would dread. What do you do to fill the time otherwise filled by TV?

I’ll let you know how it goes, but being released from the LCD bonds of the TV feels good so far. Now we watch it on our terms. We may never turn the cable back on.

PS: by never I mean until September.

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Big Bang Theory

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The Big Bang Theory
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So Chris and I are big fans of the CBS comedy The Big Bang Theory with Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons. I haven’t mentioned it before for some reason, but it’s true. We have seen every episode, we have Seasons one and two on our phones etc. I love being able to say we have 2 seasons of a TV show on our PHONE! 2010 rocks tech geek hard.

I’ve downloaded the theme song from The Big Bang Theory partly because it’s fun, but also because it’s by Barenaked Ladies! There’s way more than the first 30 seconds we hear on the show each week.

The cast is a great ensemble with the aforementioned Parsons and Galecki, joined by Kaley Cuoco (8 Simple Rules), Simon Helberg (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) and Kunal Nayyar (um, he’s new). They’ve done some great stunt casting ranging from Summer Glau through Wil Wheaton to Stan Lee.

Stan Lee was the guest star last night making a special appearance at the boy’s favorite comic store. Must be nice to be in L.A.

My favorite part of the show was the beginning when Raj was wearing his Personal Soundtrack Shirt. It was pretty geek-cool and it’s real!

Personal Soundtrack ShirtBasically it’s a t-shirt with a speaker in the middle, and a remote control. it comes pre-loaded with a variety of music and sounds, but it also has an SD slot to let you load it with just about any sound or song you can think of!

You really can have your own personal soundtrack to life. Raj plays everything from Darth Vader’s theme to the Jeopardy theme. He also punctuates with a buzzer and the “duh duh” sound from Law & Order! It’s awesome.

If I don’t get one of these for my birthday I’ll just have to find a way to go on with out it.

However, if you want one for yourself, or someone you like, simply click here to buy one from ThinkGeek.com

Kunal Nayyar
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What’s on TV?

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Chris and I are both big fans of the classic idiot box, boob tube or ‘Radiation King’ as it is known. We’ve been known to slaughter opposing teams at trivia contests, not just because we’re older, but because we’ve seen more than our share of pop culture through the CRT screen.

Not to worry, we upgraded to LCD when we bought the condo. There just isn’t room for anything else.

Back to the topic at hand. What’s on tv? And it is almost always on, especially if Chris is home. I’m content to turn it off.

Monday: House, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Dirty Jobs

Tuesday: NCIS

Wednesday: Lie To Me, Lost, Life (There’s an alliterative theme there)

Thursday: Bones and maybe Ace Of Cakes

Friday: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse

Saturday: Cops (my weekly guilty pleasure)

Sunday: America’s Funniest Home Videos, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Mythbusters

It’s not a bad list. There’s not a lot of crap on there like Desperate Housewives or other similar show (no Gossip Girl). We have a few things we download because they either aren’t on, we’re behind, or conflict with other shows. Burn Notice, and Battlestar Galactica are the two main ones right now.

We’ve tried other shows over the years, and there tend to be themes. Police procedurals (the CSI series), Dexter, Six Feet Under, Pushing Daisies (awesome), Drive (short lived, hardly had a chance) and others. They tend to be interesting, character driven and SMART television. We tried Ugly Betty, but it didn’t stick simply due to scheduling conflicts.

We challenge ourselves with Jeopardy most weeknights following a little warm-up with Wheel of Fortune while we make dinner and get cleaned up after work.

I’m a fan of nonsense TV too, hence my addiction to COPS and America’s Funniest Home Videos because I get to turn my brain off. I’m also a HUGE fan of most of the shows on HGTV (Canada), Food Network and Discovery Channel. I have a strong latent DIY gene somewhere and I think I can cook.

Anyway, all of that on top of working full time, taking care of Rumble and trying to lead productive friendly lives doesn’t leave much time. If it weren’t for time-shifting with torrents and VHS tapes, we’d never get anything done.

Give up some of it you say? Naw, that’s not an option until summer hits. Then it all goes away.