Little Sister J was horrified when I said I wasn’t going to be watching the news anymore. It wasn’t even planned. When I started listing the reasons why I did not think the local news was too much of a problem in terms of political bias I just realized that watching it was really a waste of time. I’ve always got more things that I want to do than I really have time for, so putting time into such a poor quality product is just silly. Sorry Wayne and Shawna!
(This is off topic, but Wayne Garcia has always seemed very plasticky to me. He has kind of a sheen.)
Anyway, we can always talk about television some more. Living with three other people, plus one frequent (like every night) visitor, I don’t try and take control over the TV very often. It’s just not worth the effort. I approve of Little Sister M’s obsession with House, and can tolerate the frequent viewings of Little House on the Prairie, but if I was taking control, the schedule would be somewhat different. Priorities would be My Name is Earl, Scrubs, and The Office. I have heard good things about Everybody Hates Chris, but have only been able to see an episode recently.
I’m not sure that I like it. It may have been a weaker episode of theirs, or that I wasn’t paying enough attention, or it could even be that it just doesn’t appeal to me, despite my fondness for Terry Crews. However, I can’t rule out the possibility that it just hit too close to home.
After establishing that their poverty and Dad’s thrifty nature means living on generic products, Dad gets lucky and stumbles across $200 in food stamps. This means that Mom can go shopping for brand names, and she has a great time doing so, but when she gets to checkout an acquaintance shows up, and Mom’s pride causes her to, instead of paying with the food stamps, pull out the $100 grocery money that was going to be freed up to use for something else, like maybe a family outing or the light bill. Due to additional mix-ups, the food stamps pay for Mom’s hair appointment and the lights get shut off.
It just hurts! It good have been such a windfall. The groceries were around $98, so they could have had another shopping trip, plus electricity, and gone to see Rocky III. It’s not the movie I would have picked, but still!
It’s not that poverty jokes put me off, but losing a good chance like that hurts a lot. So I may give it another chance, but it may be too painful for me. I know people who can’t find The Office or Dilbert funny, and I understand why, but it doesn’t affect me that way.
Regardless of my personal hang-ups, I’m sure it is still a good show, and there is something to be said for that. There have been a lot of horrible sitcoms out there.
I think the worst that I have seen personally is Full House. Now, I admit that I did not watch it when it was on originally, so I don’t have any nostalgia cushioning the impact. That being said, it really sucks. How did it last for eight years? Even if it was a good show, it would crumble under the weight of having spawned the evil empire known as Mary-Kate and Ashley. As it is, there’s just no excuse. I much preferred the blended household of Family Matters.
I think after The A-team wrapped up we really only watched sitcoms, so I can’t really comment on television dramas of the eighties or nineties, but I know one of the most disturbing things I have seen on television was an episode of Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman.
I have only seen the one episode, and that was fairly recently on cable, so I don’t know if this was typical. Anyway, a wagon full of sick orphans pulls into town, and Dr. Quinn and the preacher try to help, but none of the other townspeople are really interested. Yes, the storekeeper teaches one orphan that smoking is bad, and the oldest girl almost gets a job as a prostitute. That falls through because the current prostitute decides that it is more important to sacrifice herself and save the young girl from a degrading life where she can support herself and her crippled brother. (I guess there’s only room in town for one hooker.)
Meanwhile, the time Jane Seymour is spending with the new orphans and the preacher (who would like to marry her and adopt them all) alienates her boyfriend and her old orphans, so they kick the entire wagon-load out of town. We’re sorry, we can’t help you, but keep going and stick together and we’re sure something will work out. Yeah, if by working out you mean dying one by one of illness and starvation until the rest are devoured by coyotes.
I can see where it might happen in real life, but it’s not a good thing. And since this is not real life, you don’t have to construct such a dire scenario. I bet the episode writer secretly hated the entire cast, and wanted to make them look bad. Sneaky.
Next week I will try and talk about something other than television, but it may be hard. Do you know that when I try to remember childhood summer vacations, the first thing that comes to mind is watching The Bionic Woman? It was on around ten in the morning I think, on channel 12. I know we rode bikes and played hide and seek and all kinds of tag, and walk to Cook’s Market, and when I wanted to be alone I would curl up by a fan with a book and glass bottle of pop out of the refrigerator, but yeah, the first thing that comes to mind is Jaime Sommers, and that sound effect they used to convey bionic-ness.
Why do they slow down the footage to convey running really fast anyway? Wouldn’t it make more sense to speed it up?
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