TV: The Love, the Hate, the Meh

By Kerry Schafer 

Growing up a long, long time ago in small town British Columbia, our TV viewing options were pretty limited. Two channels - CBC or something else which I've now forgotten. Even if we had been blessed with such a thing as cable or satellite back in those days, our TV viewing would still have been limited. My mother was very strict on this. For the period of at least several years of my childhood there was a limitation to one hour a week. A difficult choice ensued. Hogan's Heroes was my favorite. There was something about that group of POWs and their clandestine (and funny, definitely funny) activities that appealed deeply to the childhood me. I loved watching Hogan pull things over on Colonel Klink. Loved Schultz and the fact that he knew what was going on but pretended not to. One hour a week, meant the possibility of two episodes. 

 The other sitcom choice that vied for my love was Get Smart. Not the new movie, young whippersnappers, but the original goofy series. Loved this show nearly as much as Hogan and his crew. Max was a lovable idiot who always won out in the end. Difficult choice, but a simple solution could have been one of each during the week to make up my TV viewing, right? Not so simple. Because on Sunday nights at 6 pm there was The Wonderful World of Disney. A good Disney night was pure bliss. My brother and I would have cereal for dinner that night, and watch together. If I'd chosen to watch something else, he got to watch without me and that was torture. Disney pretty much trumped the weekly half hour shows, no matter how beloved, except for the problem that bad Disney nights sucked. I wasn't much into the Donald and Mickey and Goofy scene, and certainly wasn't likely to voluntarily sacrifice my favorite weekday shows for them. Here's the problem - you didn't always know for sure what was going to be on Sunday night, and if you bypassed Hogan for Disney, and then Disney turned out to be Donald Duck, that was bad. Very unfair of my mother, I fervently believed, to put us in the situation of having to make these difficult choices. Now, I thank her deeply, because with the TV off the obvious solution was to dive into a book and I'm pretty sure my limited TV viewing combined with a voracious love of story had a lot to do with the fact that I was reading well above my expected reading level from an early age. Over the years I've had other favorite TV shows, things I looked forward to every week and hated to miss. The Muppet Show. Grey's Anatomy for the first couple of seasons. ER for the first couple of seasons. Burn Notice. NCIS. But for the most part these days I just don't care that much about any TV show. I rarely watch unless the Viking has it on, and then only to hang out and spend time with him. As for shows I hate? The one show that inspires total ire and outraged wrath on my part is Toddlers and Tiaras. I've been in a room when this show was on a couple of times, and either it goes OFF or I walk out. My blood pressure rises, I begin to rant and if one of those mothers walked into my presence I'm not sure I would be able to maintain any level of socially acceptable behavior. Just writing about it is getting me all ranty, so I think it's time to wrap up this post and move on to other things.

Television Guilt

Lump me into the 'no TV' category. No room for one on the boat. More than that, though, about a decade ago, while we were still land-based, we realized we were using the television to anesthetize ourselves. We talked about it and decided that we didn't want to spend our lives being spectators. We wanted to DO. So the television went to family members and we axed the cable.

Entertainment shifted over to our computers and Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games like World of Warcraft and Star Wars the Old Republic.

However. Both my husband and I found that after the initial TV withdrawals subsided, there were still shows we missed. Netflix resolved his issue. It couldn't accommodate my craving for spurious science. Oh yes. That's my great love. I'm a science show junkie. Even when there's no *actual* science involved in a show. My father likes to give me a hard time about the number of mummy shows I've seen. Fellow Word Whore, Jeffe, likes to give me a hard time about watching all of the over-dramatized conspiracy theory based pseudo-science shows (Brad Meltzer's "Decoded", I'm looking at you - science? Not by a longshot. But I adore you anyway.)

I go up to http://www.history.com/ and find entire seasons of shows of dubious scientific content and I binge. I don't care about actual science - though when I get it, I'm thrilled (Ancient Discoveries does a nice job of inserting science into the show - all the better because the science is usually flamable!)

You Can't Do a Little, 'Cause You Can't Do Enough

by Allison Pang

I've been home most of the week with a sick sproglet. (And to be perfectly honest, I'm feeling a bit like warmed over garbage myself. He's got strep, and I've apparently been fighting something off for weeks that includes burning eyes and cotton head.  Makes for lousy days, particularly when I have a ton of things to do.)

It also means we're watching a lot of TV together, simply because we can. Which includes a fair bit of Spongebob, among other things.

But I've been thinking a bit to the days when I was a kid and I got sick. (I actually had mono in 4th grade, so I was out of school for over an entire month...and with mono you're not supposed to run around at all. Meant a lot of book reading and TV watching.)

Of course, back in the 70' and 80's we didn't have much in the way of cable, so we were stuck with three or four channels and that's about it. There might have been a few cartoons in the morning - basic kid shows like Sesame Street or the Electric Company or whatever. Rocky &  Bullwinkle. The Great Space Coaster? (Which I freaking hated with all the fury of a thousand suns. No Gnus is Good Gnus be damned.) The New Zoo Review? I was all about a little Freddy the Frog action. Games shows like  Press Your Luck,  The Price is Right, $25,000 Pyramid.

And then it was all soap operas, which I disliked intensely.  But mid afternoon, the awesomeness of the Sid & Marty Krofft shows would pop up. H.R. PufNStuff. The Bugaloos. Sigmund the Seamonster. Land of the Lost.

Looking back on them now, I kind of have to wonder at my fascination with those particular shows, but I'll admit to a bit of fond nostalgia when I show my own kids the wonders of the Sleestaks.

Which I can do, since my mother-in-law bought us the entire Land of the Lost collection on DVD. I'm both horrified and grateful.

But really, H.R PufNStuff was my absolute favorite. When I was five, I was completely in love with Jimmy, although to this day I couldn't tell you why. I still really dig PufNStuff's smoking white cowboy boots, though. (And yes, I realize the lyrics are probably a huge reference to drugs, puffing on magic flutes and all, but still.)



Oh...and the Bugaloos too. All about groovy faeries who were probably also high.



Actually, if you wanted, you could just skip my post entirely and watch this - because this is pretty much everything I was trying to say. (Badly.)

It's about Blood & Bullets ... and maybe a train

by KAK  

Buy at B&N

Today, Monday Word-Whore James R. Tuck loses his novel virginity. (Yes, take that in as many ways as you'd like.) Today, his Urban Fantasy novel BLOOD AND BULLETS hits shelves -- tangible and virtual. Check out yesterday's post for a glimpse into the life of Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter. I warn you, these vampires are not the creatures of wet dreams.

James R. Tuck

Should you spot his book in the wild real world, Take a Picture & Tag It! Seriously, my lovely readers, we'd love for you to upload and share your pictures of any Word-Whore's books over on Facebook and tag them so we know they've been spotted.

Don't worry, any similarities between Deacon Chalk and the author are purely ... the result of a vampire using mind control. ~evil laugh~

Speaking of control and vampires... ~fishes TV remote control from under left butt cheek~ This week's topic is TV Shows That I've Loved or Hated.

Growing up, "The Wild Wild West" with Robert Conrad and Ross Martin owned me. I wanted to live on a train just like they did. I had a thing for Arte. This show was the first to introduce me to the value of the quip (quip, people, not quirt ... though I think one of the villainesses wielded one of those). I remember Arte knowing Jim was in deep trouble, because the bad guy was in disguise -- yet Arte knew it was the bad guy by shape of his ears. EARS! EARS! Man, I miss that show.

No. We will not discuss the tragedy that was the 1999 movie.  We will not discuss any show that has anything remotely related to "Reality TV" for that matter either. ~shudder~

Missives from the Land of No TV

by Jeffe Kennedy

I might be the worst possible Word Whore to kick off our week on most loved and hated TV shows, because this is my TV cabinet.

Oh, there's a TV in there, but it's usually hidden away unless we're watching a movie. We don't have cable, satellite or even an antenna. We not only don't watch TV shows, we really can't unless we get them from Netflix. Which we do from time to time, especially if people really wax on about one show or another.

I know this annoys people, when I say we don't watch TV. It makes us sound like douchebags. But we made a deliberate choice many years ago (around 15 years ago) to disconnect the cable and only watch what we made a considered choice to watch. I viewed it as breaking a habit. We were also paying off bills at the time, so throwing that considerable chunk we paid each month for TV at a debt instead made good sense. Without TV, we spent our time in other ways. We watched movies we rented and when they were over, we read or worked on projects. After a while, we didn't miss it at all.

We never went back.

This was a fairly easy choice for me because I'd been trained early on to minimize TV-watching. My mom only let me watch an hour each day, which I nearly always used up on the 4pm reruns of Star Trek. Oh yeah, baby. Star Trek and the later reboots will always be among my most loved TV shows.

So, now, we sometimes Netflix shows, which can be a funky experience because I'm always a season behind everyone else. When people are tweeting spoilers about this season's Castle (a show I do enjoy, thanks to sister Word Whore KAK's suggestion), we've just gotten last season's on disc. We followed Californication all the way through - David just loves some raunchy David Duchovny - and United States of Tara. We liked Glee, House, Nurse Jackie and The Tudors. A few others we've tried and bailed on pretty quickly. However, since I let all of you filter for me, I rarely see a show I hate.

Lately I'm hearing I should watch Downton Abbey, so it's in our queue.

So, you all tell me: what am I missing?