Comment: New TV, Screw TV

I’ve certainly mentioned at some point in these posts that we don’t have network TV, so we don’t strictly speaking have broadcast television. But we do have a TV set, which we use to watch DVDs from Netflix. If we had actual channels on our TV, we would all be drooling zombies whose butts would grow roots in the sofa. It’s too much visual candy for us. We don’t do moderation well.

And said TV, if I am to understand things, is about to become obsolete, even if we WANTED broadcast TV. There’s some new technology for new TVs starting on some date when you’ll have to have a certain kind or you won’t have any. (See how informed I am? I get all my news from NPR.)

Given the state of TV, I just don’t really care. To quote the sexy southern woman both George and Jerry dated, (but whose name eludes me) on Seinfeld, “It’s jist so much flu-uhff.”

However, I do get to see TV when I go to the gym, and like any reformed TV junkie, of course I watch as I run, walk and sweat. What I see these days is mostly nasty. News that is pretty much all bad, positioned in various ideologies depending on the network, of course.

But the thing that I saw the other day that just knocked me out was some reality show about two good-looking-in-a-thuggish-way men who were looking for love, on television, natch, and there were many tattooed and hoochily-dressed young women vying for their attention.

One of the women was, apparently, nicknamed MILF, and if you don’t know what that means by all means DON’T ask a high school student. She apparently, from what little narrative I could discern, had leaked out some secrets that one of the men had told her. He was ticked off, she was contrite. And then there was Nikki, another woman who was up for elimination with MILF, and she was pissed and wanted to state her case, whatever it was. (This all in under ten minutes. We don’t need the soaps anymore, reality TV shows are way more dramatic than they are, and sometimes the acting is better.)

MILF was going to voluntarily remove herself from the show. In a tearful moment, she began to confess that she would take herself out of contention for the guy’s affections because she had made a mistake by telling tales out of school. Nikki was jazzed because she thought that meant she was still in the game.

But here’s the reversal of fortune, drama buffs: although the guy was pissed at MILF and all signs pointed to her being booted off the show, she wasn’t. He decided that he had a “crazy connection” with her that he wanted to pursue, so Nikki was off the show. And she was robo-pissed.

Watching these ten minutes or so in total of this show made me feel like a total gawker at an accident. What you see is hideous, desperate and tragic, but you can’t look away.

TV is scary.

Besides, if my jones for TV comes up, and sometimes it does, I can always watch it online. The major networks broadcast full episodes of many of their shows. And you can always watch something on hulu.com, though I don’t understand how it’s not illegal. Whatevah.

Who needs HDTV or whatever the hell it is? There’s more than enough crap online, and it’s crap I can watch whenever I want, with limited commercial interruptions, on my very own computer, anywhere in the house. What’s better than that?

Maybe, reading a book?