The One About Television
The title of this blog probably cues you in on a secret of mine: I was an avid watcher of Friends. Even after I stopped watching ER because all my favorites were gone, and after they made 40 minute episodes so they could pay the actors’ $1 million per episode salaries, I watched Friends to the bitter end. I hated the show by its final episode, but I had to watch it for posterity.
Speaking of shows I finished for posterity, True Blood ended this season. Thankfully, they pulled it out of the tailspin shitstorm that started with the end of last season and just got worse in the first episode of this final season. (Let’s be honest. That plane crash-landed, sank to the ocean floor, and Eric Northman and Pam De Beufort lifted that bitch out of the ocean and made it fly again.) It wasn’t as bad as I expected, but I’m still glad it’s over.
I’m still really into three shows on HBO: Looking, Silicon Valley, and Game of Thrones. Looking and Silicon Valley are both half-hour shows going into their second seasons, and I still want to know more about the characters and see more interaction between them. Game of Thrones is going on five seasons, but it’s epic fantasy, I still have a dog in this fight that George R.R. Martin has yet to kill, and I love everything about the show, from casting to wardrobe.
When I tell people I have HBO, they insist I MUST watch Girls. “She’s a writer,” they say. They even said she’s going to the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop this next season. Meh. If I cared about U of I, I would have gone to school there. I don’t hate Iowa enough to surpass good television, though. I plan on hitting it up on HBO Go, if I ever finish Gossip Girl on Netflix.
Gossip Girl is 100% eye candy. I watch it while I work out. It’s just the right amount of angst and intrigue to distract me from (ugh) working out.
The show I dread watching now, as it seems to be heading toward the Friends fiery inferno and the True Blood plane crash at sea, is Supernatural. Don’t get me wrong. These boys had me at “Dad’s on a hunting trip and he hasn’t been home in a few days,” but they’ve gone to a really dark place, which leads me to believe the Buffy/Angel writers have moved on to greener pastures and the ones left after ten seasons are just not that into saving people and hunting things. I was part of the campaign that kept the show alive after seasons five and six, but seriously, guys? A Deanmon? AND a musical episode? How many times can you jump the shark before it eats you?
Maybe I’m getting too old for the CW, period, because I’m ready to throw Vampire Diaries across the room like a moldy paperback. I will watch it for Damon (Ian Somerhalder)…supposedly, he’ll be back from the untold hell dimension (or was he in heaven? Is it just me, or is this “Once More with Feeling?” Maybe Vampire Diaries is also doing a musical, but without the singing and dancing.)
I will also watch The Originals, because, well, Klaus. And Marcel. And adorable Josh the newbie vampire. I love newbie vampires who are also gay. And vampire/werewolf hybrid babies…that storyline will be epic.
This Sunday will be the season finale of The Strain, which I’m watching because, duh, vampires. I think that sums up my non-network television. Now we move into the true timesuck suckiness that is network programming.
Person of Interest. Jim Caviezel. Need I say more? Yes? Well then, Michael Emerson. And Amy Acker, of course. Who doesn’t love a little crazy Illyria, I mean Root?
Elementary. Lucy Liu is the Lemur lunar goddess, and Johnny Lee Miller’s not too shabby, either.
Survivor. (Ugh.) I know, I know. I wish I could drop this bad habit, but I can multi-task through the bullshit. Challenges are fun! Voting is fun! Drama is FUN!
CSI is dead to me. I don’t need to see any more internal impacts or watch any more dissections via the latest music soundtrack. That shit gets old.
And last, because it’s the newest, Scorpion. I was ready to drop it after the first episode because it’s as outrageously impossible as Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but the second episode was much better. And heart-wrenching. Any time a show hurts kids, it reminds me of why I don’t have one. If I lost a child, I wouldn’t be able to live with the grief. So thank you, Scorpion. And don’t make a habit of hurting kids, or I won’t be watching.
That’s an awful lot of time-suckiness I didn’t mention in my Saturday blog. And yet, I still spend more time playing Gears than watching television, when it’s all said and done. I can read a book and keep tabs on a show at the same time. I can’t read a book and kill Locusts at the same time, not without serious consequences, like walking into walls or failing the active reload. Or getting cut in half by a lancer-wielding Theron Elite.
Someday, we’ll cancel HBO and all of our shows will move on into the great beyond. I hope to have the fortitude to avoid new shows and create more writing time. Until they’re gone, I’ll check my DVR as a boon for finishing each chapter.