Brian Explains Television – Thoughts from January 7, 2011

Brian Explains: Television

The subject of my article this week is something near and dear to my heart. To this day, it is the friend who helps me wake me up in the morning and the companion that puts me to bed at night. It comforts me when I am sick and even helps me exercise so I don’t get sick in the first place. I am, of course, talking about my family maid, Alice. If you understand the reference in the last sentence, you also know I’m old and am talking about television.

My taste in television shows has always leaned more toward comedies and animation than dramas and news. The serious realities of adult life have not beaten my love of comedies or animation out of me. I have seen every episode of the Simpsons and plan to keep watching it until it is yanked off the air in 2015. (Future note: I’m glad to report the Simpsons are still making new episodes well past 2015.) Watching psychics on Oprah taught me I am psychic. I enjoy watching documentaries and behind-the-scenes shows. I watch American Choppers and L.A. Ink, but I have no interest in riding motorcycles or getting tattoos. It is like watching a soap opera without all the fakeness. It is a view of people’s lives I rarely see.

Something I have never enjoyed watching is sports. I had a time when I watched tennis and I will sometimes watch basketball, but I never really cared about the outcome. When I was a kid, I played baseball for one and a half seasons. I played half a season because I wasn’t good and took myself off the team. The assistant coach yelled at me for not getting hit by the ball (the only way I could get on base). I actually hate watching football (the American version for my three international readers). It is an unethically violent sport (like boxing) that, at most, bores me. I also do not understand why anyone has any loyalty to any team they are not playing on. Most of the players of professional sports are not from the area where the teams play their home games. Why do people root for one random accumulation of people over another? Before I go too far down the road of this subject (when I should just write an article about sports), I promise to get back to television in the next paragraph.

The two things my wife and I watch concerning football are the Superbowl commercials and the halftime show. We never watch the Superbowl live. We record the show and watch it later so we can fast forward past the boring game and get to the funny commercials. (Future note: The Superbowl commercials eventually got made into a single video you could see on YouTube. The halftime show comprised people I was less and less interested in. The whole thing became too much for me. Watching horses act out a cute story is not enough to make me forget they are commercials for beer. They usually have famous football stars in them which make them just as annoying and boring as football itself.)

I hear people saying they would like to watch a show, but they won’t be home when it is on. That is the equivalent of saying, “I would love to remember this moment, but I don’t have time to pose for a painting.” VCRs, DVRs, and TiVos have been invented. You no longer have to watch live TV. In addition, DVDs, Blu-rays, Netflix, video rentals, video on demand, and many other services give you many other options for watching what you want when you want. If you say you don’t know how to program your recording device, I think your television watching privileges should be revoked. (Future note: Younger readers may ask what this old guy, Brian, is talking about. You will say I’m talking about a problem that no longer exists. You are correct. Just appreciate that this paragraph is no longer relevant. I, for one, am glad to watch streaming videos over physical ones. The future just keeps getting better and better.)

For my second to last paragraph, I would be incorrectly representing my television life if I did not mention Forensic Files. It is a show that plays late at night on TruTV and is my wife’s favorite show to sleep to. The show usually follows a murder being solved using forensics. This is what my wife has chosen for our lullaby. Death and murder are not exactly bedtime stories, but I have gotten used to them. I am probably just bored with the stabbings, shootings, and stranglings (oh my). (Future note: Patti eventually tired of “watching” Forensic Files in her sleep. She has worked her way up to “watching” various streaming comedies. I, of course, hooked up the connections for her to do it. I went through various stages of tolerating the TV, but now I put in earplugs and wear an eye mask. The key to a long marriage is compromise.)

Television has changed a great deal from when it first appeared in the late 1920s. It switched from being analog to digital, comes to us through a cable, satellite, or computer, and connects to everything from a Blu-ray player to an interactive video game system. The idea of television is simple. You watch moving images on a screen. What you watch on the screen is the complex part. I watched a Marx Brothers movie on Netflix the other day. It was as if I was watching the future and the past at the same time. But as Oprah has taught me, the past and future are merely what you make of them in the present. Actually, it might have been SpongeBob SquarePants.