Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Television

My friend Chris Kaiser (@CKEMTP) posted an interesting link on Facebook. I started to reply. Then I realized that this was turning into a blog post. So here goes.


In short - Discovery Networks (and others) have given up on the "educational" genre and now simply make stuff up. It's depressing.



It's funny. I've never paid for cable in my life. When I lived at the squad, I cable TV in my room, but I rarely watched it. If there was something I wanted to watch, I usually went someplace else and watched it with people. If I wanted background noise, I played music on my iPod.


Most of my TV-watching is done in the station. Paid or volunteer, it's almost a requirement that we have the TV on, providing background noise while we "do stuff" - charting, browsing the web on my iPad, or whatever... It's a distraction. 

There's a short list of shows that I seem out and watch during downtime at the station.


Pawn Stars: because as much as its fake (any reality show is) - I like the angle of unusual American History.

NCIS and Law and Order (and variants) are good for mindless police procedurals to fill time. Apparently, I haven't seen them all yet.

Dirty Jobs: Because Mike Rowe is awesome.

Jeopardy!: because I dream of being on the show one day.

COPS (and Campus Police to an extent): The show proves that the 'stupid' I see at work isn't that different from the 'stupid' others deal with.

Emergency!: Because. That's why. 


As for dramas - well, Scrubs has been off the air for a couple of years. Royal Pains is somewhat interesting - MacGuyver medicine appeals to all medics. I've not ever gotten into Breaking Bad, and they cancelled Firefly years ago.


Anyway - that's my big thought tonight.