I’m not watching as much TV as I used to. I think that for the most part the novelty of having a TV has worn off. It’s boring, honestly. And extremely repetitive. And ugly, often.
So why the post, then? It’s because I can’t get away from TV, even when I don’t watch.
My parents are, unfortunately, TV addicts, in the same way that almost everyone I have ever known is. You can’t… get away from it, even when you try to. It follows you- even during those long years in which I never owned or watched TV, I had to hear on a regular basis all kinds of dumb shit about TV programming. I had to listen to others talk about American Idol, Survivor, and… all sorts of other stupid, infantile bullshit. It follows you, whether you want it to or not.
I still watch Disney+. It’s fun, on occasion. I still watch those 90’s animated sitcoms like Pepper Ann and Doug. And Phineas and Ferb. And Pixar stuff sometimes, and every once in a while, a movie featuring one of my girlfriends. And sometimes some live action TV, like an episode of something like Liv and Maddie.
I’ve gone through all of that before, so I won’t repeat most of that now.
But I like the 90’s sitcoms, because they’re fun. They’re low pressure viewing, and unpretentious, and enjoyable. Something like Pepper Ann is great because it’s episodic. Each episode is self-contained, so you can just pick it up and watch whenever. It’s fun, and diverting. It doesn’t try to be an “experience”.
I really do not think I would enjoy most of TV these days. From what I understand most TV shows these days have continuous narratives that run throughout the series, so that each episode builds on the last. That… sucks. I wouldn’t imagine that watching something like that would be too enjoyable. You need to remember stuff, lol. What did the last episode say? You need to recall it, and… fuck that, it’s just TV. Who gives a shit? The characters are not real people. It’s all fantasy. Why should I clog my brain up with that crap?
It’s for that reason that I never bothered to watch a full episode of Game of Thrones, or Breaking Bad, or… a lot of stuff, really. And it’s for that reason that I don’t give a shit about sports. Or the “news”. My brain can only do so much, and I would rather spend my mental energies chatting with my girlfriends instead of retaining memories about some dumb show or some idiotic sports event.
And TBH they are all dumb shows. I’ve seen clips of many classic shows on YouTube, to get the gist of what the shows were. It’s a good way to stay informed about the world (and especially, myself) without having to sink some preposterous amount of hours of my life into some TV show. And they’re all about the same, really. The kid’s shows that I’ve seen are no dumber or less real than the “adult” shows. It’s just that the adult shows pretend to be smart, or worldly, etc. They aren’t, really. Their grittiness is all a façade.
Honestly, a random episode of Kim Possible is every bit as smart and realistic as anything on some dumb police procedural, or anything else on TV for that matter, including the “news”. So who gives a crap?
Regardless, yeah, TV can be good I guess if used correctly, which my parents, for example, don’t and never have.
I hate to do this but… fuck it, I need to vent, and they’re a good illustration of the problems many have with TV.
First, they watch it. A lot. As in alllll the time, and… that’s bad, considering that everything on TV is dumb as shit. It’s not like the web, where you have a mix of smart and dumb stuff, and you can pick and choose based on your needs. No- on TV, it’s all dumb.
My poor mother just sits on the couch all day watching trash TV while bitching about how she’s watching trash TV. Seriously- that’s her life. She doesn’t actually do anything. It’s… kinda amazing, honestly. She doesn’t really even think. She just regurgitates ideas she sees on TV, and those are her “thoughts”.
It’s… really bizarre, and kinda scary.
To explain: my mom watches MSNBC alllllll the time. It’s all stupid, all dumb, all shallow, but she doesn’t let that stop her, no, not for anything. Good Lord is that channel stupid. But anyhow, her understanding of “health” is what the commercials say. And all of the commercials are for pharma shit. Vaccines, and prescriptions. So that’s what she thinks “health” is. Vaccines and prescriptions, and nothing else.
She has an exercise bike about 10 feet away from her all times, and she hasn’t seriously used it, ever. I think it’s three or four years old now. I got her some small dumbbells that she wanted for Christmas one year and she’s never used them once. Her doctors tell her to exercise, that she needs to exercise, and she listens to them, but then never makes even the smallest effort once out of the doctor’s office. I mean, why should she? It’s not what the commercials say, after all. She just comes home, turns on the TV, and forgets everything else in the world except for that which that idiot box tells her.
Her world is truly bizarre. She is easily 100 pounds overweight and constantly complains about… everything, health-wise, muscles, bones, insomnia, her joints, her tinnitus, I mean, too many things to even list, but she considers herself healthier than I am, even though I actually fix my health problems, have a BMI in the “normal” range and work out 20 hours a week.
Why? it’s because she’s had more vaccines than I have. Seriously. She gets more vaccines than I do, and that counts for more than anything. I can hardly believe the world this woman lives in, sometimes.
Her thoughts are mostly just an endless stream of bullshit. I know this for a fact since she has a tendency to blurt out everything she thinks. It’s just… Trump shit. Trump did this, Russia did that, this law was passed for that reason, and it’s alllll stupid.
Her mind is a circus of thoughts about the greatness of vaccines and prescriptions and the importance of unbelievably stupid political shit, with a sprinkling of narratives from garbage “Reality TV” shows like My 600 Pound Life.
My father is no better. He has watched at least a portion of every single Bears game since they were first broadcast on TV God knows how many generations ago. And I don’t mean that as hyperbole, either. He watches golf, watches “the news” (and in that respect, thinks himself superior to my mother because he watches the crap on PBS as opposed to the crap on MSNBC, lol), and a lot of other shitty, brainless junk.
No, I don’t tell them what I watch. I know they would criticize it, and call it “kid’s stuff”. They would probably wonder why I wasn’t watching something “smarter”, lol. Good God, the world they live in, lol.
And it isn’t just them. There are hundreds of millions of people in this country just like they are- lost in a daze of… fantasy. And stupid fantasy, at that.
It’s pretty sad, TBH. I mean it really is.
In other TV related stuff, I’m not going to watch any of the latest Star Wars or Marvel stuff. Why would I, honestly. Everything I’ve heard about Obi-Won makes it sound like it’s the forth-best interpretation of the character that’s been made, with it being worse than Guinness’ version, Lucas’ prequel version of the character, and the extended universe version.
Why would I watch, then? It’s the same problem I have with… IDK, She-Hulk. That lawyer show. God that show sounds horrible. I read reviews of it where even left-leaning outfits like The Daily Beast criticized the show as being annoyingly PC and woke. I’m not going to bother.
I’m not interested in the new LOTR series, either. It looks like the fifth or sixth best version of that universe, too, which puts it behind the original books, Jackson’s version, Bakshi’s version, Chris Tolkien’s version, and various video games, heavy metal albums and other adaptations, etc.
Why would I bother, then? “The Eighth Best Version of Lord of the Rings, Ever!” doesn’t sound appealing. You want me to sink 40 hours or whatever of my life into this? You must be kidding.
That series is being just raked over the coals online. It’s just all so… tiresome. I had some great laughs reading reviews of the series online from fans of previous iterations of the world. It’s just… oof.
A lot has been made of the inclusion this time of non-white people (“people of color”). Well, I’m not watching it either way, but it’s always a bad sign when you see that kind of thing forcefully included in a franchise where it hasn’t been, previous. It never turns out well. It always ends up sucking, it seems.
Ugh, though, I don’t want to get dragged into political shit, again. And you can’t talk about race without bringing up politics, and ugh, fucking yuck.
Well, I’m getting bored of this so I’m ending this one here.