{"id":135,"date":"2003-09-08T14:39:14","date_gmt":"2003-09-08T14:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=135"},"modified":"2020-08-16T23:08:19","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T03:08:19","slug":"too_much_tv_not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=135","title":{"rendered":"Too much TV, not enough time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sdb.dotclue.org\/\">Steven Den Beste<\/a> sometimes posts essays on his blog that began as comments on other people&#8217;s blogs, but got out of control. This occasionally happens to me, too. I realize that I&#8217;ve written a thousand words and still have more to say. At some point you have to admit that you&#8217;re writing an essay, and you should be posting it on your own blog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This piece originated in that fashion. The GNO bulletin board site currently has a discussion thread about this fall&#8217;s crop of new TV shows (and who likes which ones). I initially posted a laconic response that just said I don&#8217;t have time to watch TV anymore. But then Ben posted his take on some History Channel shows (including <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Conquest_(TV_series)\"><cite>Conquest<\/cite><\/a>) and I felt that I needed to amend my previous statement. Before I knew it, I was writing an essay. So here it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Like Ben, I&#8217;ve become addicted to <cite>Conquest<\/cite>. Fortunately for me, new episodes don&#8217;t seem to come out very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I should clarify my previous comments. It&#8217;s not that I don&#8217;t watch TV any more; it&#8217;s that I really don&#8217;t have time for much TV and I <em>try<\/em> not to watch very much, but I often succumb to temptation and watch when I really should be doing other things. For me, TV shows fall into four categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Shows that I officially watch and that I&#8217;m keeping up with. I have Season Passes for these and I watch each new episode as soon as possible. <cite>Conquest<\/cite> and <cite>Teen Titans<\/cite> are in this category. (So is <cite>Futurama<\/cite> even though I don&#8217;t think many new episodes are being shown these days. I either managed to miss a number of episodes when they were new or have forgotten them, so I&#8217;m recording and watching most reruns of it because they are new to me.) All of these are half-hour shows, enabling me to watch them while eating and pretend I&#8217;m not really spending any time on TV.<\/li><li>Shows that I officially watch, but have fallen behind on. I have Season Passes for these and I transfer them to videotape for later viewing, creating a horrific VHS backlog that I&#8217;ll probably never entirely deal with. <cite>Star Trek Voyager<\/cite> used to be in this category, but I finally made a herculean effort and finished watching all the episodes about a year and a half after the show ended. Several other shows that have ended their run are in this category for me: <cite>Dark Angel<\/cite>, <cite>Firefly<\/cite>, <cite>Buffy<\/cite>, <cite>Tremors: The Series<\/cite>. <cite>Enterprise<\/cite> is also one of these &#8212; I&#8217;m over a year behind on it. From time to time I recognize that some particular show is so far down my list of things to watch, and has such a large backlog, that I will <em>never<\/em> catch up with it. When this happens, I admit defeat and recycle the videotapes. <cite>Sliders<\/cite>, <cite>JAG<\/cite>, <cite>Andromeda<\/cite>, and <cite>Odyssey 5<\/cite> all fell by the wayside in this fashion.<\/li><li>Shows that I don&#8217;t officially watch, but I like them and sometimes end up sitting down to watch if someone else has them on. Guilty pleasures, in other words. <cite>State of Grace<\/cite> was one of these until we ran out of new episodes, and <cite>Gilmore Girls<\/cite> still is. So are <cite>Trading Spaces<\/cite> and several of its imitations. And yes, Ben, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mail_Call\"><cite>Mail Call<\/cite><\/a> is in this category.<\/li><li>Shows that I officially don&#8217;t watch, have no interest in watching even furtively, and will actually leave the room to get away from if someone else turns them on. All &#8220;reality&#8221; shows fall into this category, including <cite>American Idol<\/cite> in all its forms (sorry, Jen). Sports, news, and game shows (except for <cite>Jeopardy<\/cite>, of course) are also in this category.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I am old enough to remember a time when there were only three or four TV channels &#8212; and no VCRs, so if you missed something when it was on, you had to wait for a rerun or just didn&#8217;t see it at all. Now we have hundreds of channels, and VCRs and TiVo to make sure than we never miss anything we really want to see. I cannot recall a time after about 1975 when there weren&#8217;t more good shows on TV than I had time to watch. (I still don&#8217;t know the ending of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Captains-Kings-Richard-Jordan\/dp\/B001HCWGUW\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3SOP4XFMV8Q9&amp;dchild=1&amp;keywords=captains+and+the+kings&amp;qid=1597633232&amp;s=movies-tv&amp;sprefix=Captains+and+the+Kings%2Caps%2C180&amp;sr=1-1\"><cite>The Captains and the Kings<\/cite><\/a>. I watched most of it in 1976, but had to give it up because my high school homework didn&#8217;t leave me enough free time to watch a miniseries. Now that it&#8217;s available on home video, I could theoretically buy it and watch the whole thing at last. But I have even less spare time now than I did in high school.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s a popular affectation in our society to exclaim that there&#8217;s nothing worth watching on TV. But when someone says that in my presence, I can&#8217;t help responding with an incredulous stare. Do these people have <em>that<\/em> much spare time? Are their standards so high that nothing satisfies them? Or are they just saying that in order to <em>pretend<\/em> that they&#8217;re that discriminating?<br>Sure, there&#8217;s a lot of worthless dreck on TV. So what? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantasticfiction.co.uk\/authors\/Theodore_Sturgeon.htm\">Theodore Sturgeon<\/a> once <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jargon.net\/jargonfile\/s\/SturgeonsLaw.html\">observed<\/a> that 90% of science fiction is crud. But, he added, 90% of <em>everything<\/em> is crud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steven Den Beste sometimes posts essays on his blog that began as comments on other people&#8217;s blogs, but got out of control. This occasionally happens to me, too. I realize that I&#8217;ve written a thousand words and still have more &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/?p=135\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":637,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patberry.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}