Average Jane’s TV Viewing Habits

By popular demand, let’s talk TV. First of all, TiVo or no TiVo, my daily television time is dwindling rapidly. Many of my longtime favorite shows and the new shows I was getting to like are being axed right and left, so I’m beginning to give up. Still, a few shows remain on my list, even if not for long.

• Last night I watched the final episode of Friends. Yawn. Seriously, I had to fight the urge to grab the laptop next to me and surf before the show ended. The trouble is, I lost interest in Friends a long time ago. As Chris Suellentrop astutely pointed out on Slate earlier this week, Friends is really a soap opera masquerading as a situation comedy. Thus, once someone loses track of the ongoing storylines (or no longer cares), the incentive to watch disappears.
• That leads me to Angel, a show I freely admit is a soap opera but will miss desperately when it ends after the next two episodes. This Wednesday’s episode was a little uneven, but contained a couple of the creepiest scenes I’ve ever seen on any show. Without getting too geekily boring for the non-watchers, they involved a beloved character who was killed and “inhabited” by an ancient, amoral being some weeks back. When the character’s parents unexpectedly drop by, the usually cold and contemptuous creature impersonates her perky and bubbly late host, fooling the parents and horrifying the one person who knows what’s going on. It made me think of stories I’d heard about friendly, handsome men who turn out to be serial killers. Very chilling.
• Speaking of moral ambiguity, I’m still very much enjoying Deadwood. Now that I’m aware of just how many characters are based on figures from history, I find myself doing Google searches to get an idea of what might happen next. The show does a great job of holding an atmosphere of looming threat over every interaction between characters. I’ll bet the real town of Deadwood’s tourism business experiences an upturn this summer.
• Then we get to The Sopranos, speaking of looming threats. By now, regular viewers know that no character is exempt from sudden, violent death, so watching a show becomes an exercise in sharing each character’s dread. I’m not sure where things are headed this season, but I can guarantee they’ll just keep getting worse.
• Finally there’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I almost forgot about it because they don’t make all that many new episodes per season, but I’m a sucker for makeovers, especially when they involve men. The majority of women, whether they act on it or not, know about manicures and pedicures, judicious waxing, etc. We probably have at least one friend who would be willing to go shopping with us and help us become more fashionable. Men – maybe not. I don’t know, though. My husband was a metrosexual before there was a word for it, and his haircare products fill a whole cupboard, so maybe I’m just making unwarranted assumptions. I just can’t resist “before and after” stuff, though.
• That’s about it for the shows I never miss. It leaves a handful of shows that I usually watch but can live without: Two and a Half Men, Scrubs, Unwrapped and Will and Grace to name the majority.
• There’s one show left that we’ve been TiVoing and enjoying a great deal, that little gem of silliness from the late 90s, Weird Science. Don’t laugh! For a fairly low-budget show based on a movie, it’s remarkably well done. We’re enjoying the game of “identify the guest star,” as we watch. A week or so ago one of the episodes featured comedian Jake Johannsen. It took me almost the entire episode to figure out who he was because I’d never seen him do anything but standup. But I digress…

My TV watching has declined for the same reason that I’m less and less willing to spend $8 at the movie theater: too many disappointments. These days I find it more interesting to spend an evening finding and reading new blogs than taking a chance on the latest steaming pile of entertainment-by-committee. Maybe I’ve spotted a new trend; maybe I’m just out of touch. Either way, mega-entertainment is gradually losing a customer.