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Wherein I've Pretty Much Given Up Watching Television

Started by Killer Bees, March 24, 2008, 07:58:28 PM

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Oldskool138

Quote from: Killer Bees on March 27, 2008, 10:46:38 PM
Any time a show is billed as "must see" and "critics choice" or "taken the US by storm" I deliberately don't watch it. 

It's not hard to take the US by storm as far as TV goes.  We'll (not me but the royal "we") watch anything if it is mildly humorous and has a catch-phrase. 

Don't get me started on "reality" TV.  I was on a cruise (Navy, not Carnival) when the first Survivor came out.  My ship pulled in and we were shocked to find out that everybody had been watching this show.  I remember sitting in a bar with my buddy the night of the final episode and there was nobody in there.  The TV above the bar was playing it so we decided to play darts.  It was surreal because I thought the show was dreck of lowest order.
He learned almost too late that man is a feeling creature... and because of it, the greatest in the universe........
-Dr. Paul Nelson (Peter Graves)

That gum you like is going to come back in style.
-The Man from Another Place

Ash

I would say I'm definitely not in the club of non-TV watchers.
I have a DVD recorder and at the beginning of each week, I check the TV schedule on Yahoo TV and set the timer for all my shows.

They are as follows:

Mon: Family Guy re-runs on TBS, King of the Hill re-runs on Fox

Tue: Family Guy re-runs on TBS, King of the Hill re-runs on Fox.  Hell's Kitchen premiers April 1st so I'll be recording that.  (love that show!)

Wed: Family Guy re-runs on TBS, King of the Hill re-runs on Fox

Thur: Lost, Crime 360, The First 48 (both on A&E)

Fri: Battle 360 on The History Channel, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO

Sat: If the Saturday night new movie on HBO is a good one, I'll record it.  Recorded Blades of Glory last weekend.  (hadn't seen that one)

Sun: Ebert & Roeper at 5:30 am, New episodes of Family Guy and King of the Hill

So yeah, I do watch a lot of TV.   :wink:

Killer Bees

Quote from: Oldskool138 on March 28, 2008, 04:01:25 PM
Quote from: Killer Bees on March 27, 2008, 10:46:38 PM
Any time a show is billed as "must see" and "critics choice" or "taken the US by storm" I deliberately don't watch it. 

It's not hard to take the US by storm as far as TV goes.  We'll (not me but the royal "we") watch anything if it is mildly humorous and has a catch-phrase. 

Don't get me started on "reality" TV.  I was on a cruise (Navy, not Carnival) when the first Survivor came out.  My ship pulled in and we were shocked to find out that everybody had been watching this show.  I remember sitting in a bar with my buddy the night of the final episode and there was nobody in there.  The TV above the bar was playing it so we decided to play darts.  It was surreal because I thought the show was dreck of lowest order.

I totally agree about reality tv.  I was on holiday in Canada when it first came out.  I couldn't believe people were watching it.  How real could it be when they are living with the production crew every day?  And all those trials they go through would never happen if they were really stranded on a deserted island.

If it ended up like Lord of the Flies, then it would be interesting because it would survival in the truest sense.  All shows like that do is make uninteresting losers famous for 5 minutes and then they disappear into obscurity where they belong.
Flower, gleam and glow
Let your power shine
Make the clock reverse
Bring back what once was mine
Heal what has been hurt
Change the fates' design
Save what has been lost
Bring back what once was mine
What once was mine.......

Inyarear

It's funny, you know: when I was a teenager, watching TV whenever I could was fun because my parents forbade me to do it. Also, when I went to college, I was a major fan of all line-drawings, be they comics or cartoons, so for a while I watched the Batman/Superman Adventures show on the WB Channel. Then I got introduced to anime and fansubbing and the whole online fan community built up around it, and started to appreciate how those stories generally had a beginning and an ending and I didn't have to be on anyone's schedule to see the whole thing.

Of course, anime didn't stay novel and exciting to me forever, but after a while, I began to see that my parents were right about the sheer mind-numbing banality of TV; it didn't help that when my roommate and I were watching TV in the dorm's TV room, he got easily distracted and took to channel surfing to other shows during the ads, such that I could never really keep up with what was going on in any one story line. To make things worse, I had to agree with him that the ads were really mind-numbing and I didn't care to see them. The bottom line is that after a while, I just gave up on TV altogether and took to watching only stuff I could get on a tape, a DVD, or my computer.

To make matters even more interesting, years later after I'd graduated, I took some further courses in a community college, and for one of them, I was asked to write papers based on television shows at least twice. The first was just a paper about my "favorite" TV show. Since it had been years since I'd watched anything on TV, this could have been problematic. However, I figured that my anime collection is essentially Japanese TV, so I did a paper on my favorite anime of the moment, and it got a good grade.

The next paper that came up called for me to try out several of the capacities of MS Word, specifically its multiple-mailing function, and the assignment was to imagine I was going on Survivor and that I was writing this letter to several of my friends to ask them to come celebrate with me or something. I was, moreover, instructed to "be enthusiastic" about this. Now I certainly wasn't watching Survivor or anything even remotely like it at the time, so I didn't know much more about it than what I read in the news. Judging by what I'd heard, I wouldn't have wanted to be on it anyway.

Therefore, I decided to take the whole fantasy angle of this setup to an extreme and pretend that I was some kind of super-villain seeking revenge on all popularity contests and their sponsors for the way I'd (supposedly) been treated by all the popular kids in their contests in high school. (I might have felt that way if I hadn't been homeschooled through high school; I certainly felt that way about the middle school I'd previously attended.) Thus, my letter was a summons to a great many other unpopular former classmates (all fabricated entities, of course) to whom I was appealing to come bring the parts to assemble a mind-control beam and help me wreck the show, nuke the audience, and kill all the other cast and crew. In short, I made myself out to be very enthusiastic about annihilating Survivor and killing everyone involved in it.

That paper got a perfect score.

SynapticBoomstick

On my first visit to Mexico I went two months without television and I can't say that I really missed it very much. Sure, I missed some stuff I'd wanted to see but there was so much else to see and do that I got over it. I also went those two months without fast food and now I watch less television and don't eat McDonalds or Burger King anymore. Time away really does work  :thumbup:
Kleel's rule is harsh :-B

Ed, Ego and Superego

Our TV broke last year and we went about 9 months without one.  It was an adjustment, but it did get us to listen to a lot more music at home.  In December we had a really sick baby so were homebound holding a sleeping li'l girl 24/7, after two days of that, I was sent out to buy myself an early Christmas present.  So I got a small, but high end TV. 
So far we have really not gone back to watching it.  I watch a few shows when I can catch them, and they are mostly "nerd" shows.
1) How its Made- a Canadian-made science channel showing, believe it or not, how stuff is made.
2) Modern and Ancient Marvels on the History Channnel.
3) Seattle Mariner's baseball, not a "fan" but I like a good game.
4) Good Eats on Food TV. 

There are some other ones, but I never set my schedule around TV.  No TV show is that important.
-Ed


Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes

JJ80

One thing I like about reality television is that it utterly p*&^%s off that most smug, vain, conceited, worthless breed of animal life: actors!
Although I quite like "The Simpsons" I've began to believe that 'adult animation' has mainly had the function of infantalising the population, making it acceptable for adults to watch children's programmes.

lester1/2jr

there is no catalyst like seinfeld was in the 90's.    no one going for the brass ring, just new shows made for people who like the current shows.

renzino

I have pretty much given up on television as well.

I don't have a real TV watching schedule at all anymore.

I mostly watch a lot of videos on Youtube and DVDs.

CheezeFlixz

I watch pretty news and movies and a few shows on channels like the Discovery channel, I haven't watch the BIG 3 (CBS, NBC, ABC) in years and only rarely do I turn on the local news. I have about 300 channels and I think I watch less than 10 of them, some channels I just don't see the point in and other channels I block completely. (Like the Logo channel ... just don't need to see that.)

WingedSerpent

Any time a show is billed as "must see" and "critics choice" or "taken the US by storm" I deliberately don't watch it.  Everything is overhyped and underdone.  It's like the overuse of sex.  They use it sell EVERYTHING.  It's information overload for me.  I don't even bother any more.



Also be carefull if the following words appaer: "hip" "edgey" "irevelvet" "not your traditional_____"

There are still shows I watch, but really nothing religiously anymore.  I don't know if I'm going to be watching Heroes again when it comes back.  I didn't really care for the last season. 
At least, that's what Gary Busey told me...

Killer Bees

There's even more dreck on tv here now if that's possible.

It's all reality rescue shows:  sick/injured animals, crappy backyards, firemen, police, beach lifeguards, sick kids in hospital, hospital emergency rooms, sick newborns in the maternity ward, the list is endless.  Now there's one that's a hybrid.  A cross between a poor/sick people rescue and backyard makoever show.  It's called Backyard Blitz or some such nonsense.

Apparently, if you're poor or in dire financial straits (but with your own house of course) and someone you love is desperately sick or in hospital, they'll come to your house and fix everything, backyard, renos, new furniture, whatever before the sick relative comes home and then they film the resulting blubbing fest.

It's enough to make me sick.  It's like Extreme Makeover, where you send a letter or vid of your ugly self pleading to be made beautiful and then a camera crew is sent to your house on some lame premise and they actually expect you to believe that it's a HUGE surprise when they tell you that you've been chosen for the show.

That's what Backyard Blitz is like.   Give me a break.
Flower, gleam and glow
Let your power shine
Make the clock reverse
Bring back what once was mine
Heal what has been hurt
Change the fates' design
Save what has been lost
Bring back what once was mine
What once was mine.......

HappyGilmore

Quote from: WingedSerpent on May 10, 2008, 01:32:49 PM
Any time a show is billed as "must see" and "critics choice" or "taken the US by storm" I deliberately don't watch it.  Everything is overhyped and underdone.  It's like the overuse of sex.  They use it sell EVERYTHING.  It's information overload for me.  I don't even bother any more.



Also be carefull if the following words appaer: "hip" "edgey" "irevelvet" "not your traditional_____"

There are still shows I watch, but really nothing religiously anymore.  I don't know if I'm going to be watching Heroes again when it comes back.  I didn't really care for the last season. 
I've avoided Lost, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Dirty Sexy Money, The Sopranos, and a few others because of those very words.  I don't watch as much tv as I used to, but I still have certain shows I go out of my way to watch.
"The path to Heaven runs through miles of clouded Hell."

Don't get too close, it's dark inside.
It's where my demons hide, it's where my demons hide.

Killer Bees

Quote from: HappyGilmore on May 11, 2008, 07:50:14 PM
Quote from: WingedSerpent on May 10, 2008, 01:32:49 PM
Any time a show is billed as "must see" and "critics choice" or "taken the US by storm" I deliberately don't watch it.  Everything is overhyped and underdone.  It's like the overuse of sex.  They use it sell EVERYTHING.  It's information overload for me.  I don't even bother any more.



Also be carefull if the following words appaer: "hip" "edgey" "irevelvet" "not your traditional_____"

There are still shows I watch, but really nothing religiously anymore.  I don't know if I'm going to be watching Heroes again when it comes back.  I didn't really care for the last season. 
I've avoided Lost, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Dirty Sexy Money, The Sopranos, and a few others because of those very words.  I don't watch as much tv as I used to, but I still have certain shows I go out of my way to watch.

I was exactly the same.  I did watch about 10 mins each of Lost, Heroes, Despos, but they made me barf.  I didn't bother with DSM, it looked like an updated version of Dynasty.  As for the Sopranos, to me it's a hysterical comedy.

All those idiot mobsters with their fake loyalties and stupid accents and bad taste in clothes and home decor.  Any time I see the Mafia in movies I crack up because they are just bad stereotypes of themselves.

And Tony Soprano - what a creepy sleazy ugly mofo.  The best ep I saw was when he was sick with food poisoning or something and he was vomiting and farting with explosive diahhrea.  Now THAT'S comedy   :bouncegiggle:
Flower, gleam and glow
Let your power shine
Make the clock reverse
Bring back what once was mine
Heal what has been hurt
Change the fates' design
Save what has been lost
Bring back what once was mine
What once was mine.......

HappyGilmore

Quote from: Killer Bees on May 12, 2008, 09:03:34 PM
Quote from: HappyGilmore on May 11, 2008, 07:50:14 PM
Quote from: WingedSerpent on May 10, 2008, 01:32:49 PM
Any time a show is billed as "must see" and "critics choice" or "taken the US by storm" I deliberately don't watch it.  Everything is overhyped and underdone.  It's like the overuse of sex.  They use it sell EVERYTHING.  It's information overload for me.  I don't even bother any more.



Also be carefull if the following words appaer: "hip" "edgey" "irevelvet" "not your traditional_____"

There are still shows I watch, but really nothing religiously anymore.  I don't know if I'm going to be watching Heroes again when it comes back.  I didn't really care for the last season. 
I've avoided Lost, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Dirty Sexy Money, The Sopranos, and a few others because of those very words.  I don't watch as much tv as I used to, but I still have certain shows I go out of my way to watch.

I was exactly the same.  I did watch about 10 mins each of Lost, Heroes, Despos, but they made me barf.  I didn't bother with DSM, it looked like an updated version of Dynasty.  As for the Sopranos, to me it's a hysterical comedy.

All those idiot mobsters with their fake loyalties and stupid accents and bad taste in clothes and home decor.  Any time I see the Mafia in movies I crack up because they are just bad stereotypes of themselves.

And Tony Soprano - what a creepy sleazy ugly mofo.  The best ep I saw was when he was sick with food poisoning or something and he was vomiting and farting with explosive diahhrea.  Now THAT'S comedy   :bouncegiggle:
I didn't even watch one minute of Lost, Heroes, etc.  Just had Zero interest in them to begin with. 

My tv schedule now is primarily Law and Order (all of them, reruns mostly), Simpsons, South Park, King of the Hill, Reaper and Real World.  I try to always watch the new Law and Order's when I can, but usually end up just catching the original one on Wednesday.
"The path to Heaven runs through miles of clouded Hell."

Don't get too close, it's dark inside.
It's where my demons hide, it's where my demons hide.