Actually, I generally try to watch as little TV as I can. But more often than I care to admit, I feel like simply vegging, and find myself in front of the tube.
Usually I’ll try to see what “looks good.” But with rare exceptions, comedies prove unfunny, dramas contrived, or I find myself disappointed for various other reasons. Sure, some nature programs and Masterpiece Theater generally please, and I still enjoy me my House and Supernatural, but even prior faves like The Big Bang, Bones, and countless others miss far more often than they hit.
So for reliable, vegging pleasure, there’s no substitute for good old crap TV. Give me some HGTV shows like House Hunters, or Property Virgins, some food channel fare, UFC Fight Night, or any number of the crap shows on History from Pawn Stars and Pickers to Deadliest Warrior. You go in there expecting little, and you get what you expect. And if you pick a time when 2 or 3 are on at the same time, you ca click between them and not have to worry about commercials. (They’re so crappy, I’m too embarrassed to DVR them!) And since you know they are going to suck, you don’t mind if you mis some of on or the other of them, tune in late, or just shut off the tube in the middle!
Honestly, most of my crap TV fixes are on your “good TV” list. I watch Bones and House and NCIS not because they’re good (they’re not) but because they’re silly and I can watch them alone without feeling bad that my boyfriend is missing them. I mean, you know what you’re getting, there’s a part you like in all of them, and you can ignore the shitty parts.
See, that’s the part that kills me. It seems the parts I like keep getting harder and harder to find. Whereas with crap, your expectations are so much lower going in!
Glee. totally cheesy and I love it. I watch a lot on Hulu and I’ve taken to watching that horrid made just for Hulu reality show “If I Can Dream” every Tuesday afternoon. I’m embarrassed to admit it, actually. I’m also glad that my tv antenna doesn’t pick up CBS so I’m spared the embarrassment of getting hooked on Big Brother.
When the indigestion got really bad, I went to the ER and when the nurse cut my pants open there was a slimy baby there!
The show with the hoarders.
When Fluffy the goldfish died, his collecting obsession took on such gigantic proportions that his pile of used toilet paper grew sentient and ate him. Only his toe nails were found.
P.S. I loves me some HGTV but I don’t consider it crap like I do these shows.
I don’t prefer crap TV. But there are some shows I like. I love “Property Ladder” and watching people who have no business near real estate attempt to flip houses without going broke.
My recent crap TV find is “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” I’m not their target audience at all, and yet I’m strangely invested in who’s going to win this season.
House Hunters International. I like to see how folks live in other countries.
FTV, the fashion show network. I like fashion, and it’s also amusing to ridicule the vapid dilettantes and hangers-on swanning around the fashion shows.
America’s Funniest Videos. I still think they’re funny after all these years, especially the animal vids.
Here in the Netherlands, there are a couple of programs detailing the traffic cops following speeding cars & asshole drivers. And this isn’t your spectacular American show with high speed chases and crashes and guns. Just some guys in a police car stopping drivers, talking to them condescendingly and handing out tickets, with a voice over explaining the relevant details of the traffic laws.
I don’t know why I watch it; I don’t own a car, I don’t like cops and I don’t even have a drivers’ license. Yet I have to watch it if I see it’s on.
I love watching bad movies on the Lifetime network. Can’t get enough of them and it’s extra fun if the cast is full of unknown Canadian actors. The cheesier the better!
Oh, yeah, I like Holmes on Homes on HGTV. Some poor homeowner gets a ream-job by a crappy home improver, and Holmes comes along to fix it all up proper. As he criticizes the bad work, he’s snarky enough to qualify as a charter member Doper.
Having 3 kids, I usually only get to watch TV when I’m winding down or in bed, and I don’t want drama, especially work-related drama with that speedy, glib, cut-back-and-forth dialogue to make vapid actors seem heavy…I like documentaries or sports or some comedy…I don’t want to watch some comepletely rolercoastingly enthralling epic OMG anything.
Why, I don’t know-I am not fond of lawyers, and the show was pretty trite.
But I enjoyed watching it, for some reason.
I also liked that old BBC show from the UK …"Teaching Dogs to Sit and Stay…the Woodhouse Way"slow and graggy, but fun to watch!
MonsterQuest on the History Channel is my favorite crap TV fix. Yeah, I know it’s bullshit, and they rely way too heavily on Sasquatch. They occasionally do shows on real critters, however, such as freshwater sharks and pythons in the Everglades. I never knew that sharks can navigate up the Mississippi River as far north as Illinois, for example. Unfortunately, it’s been canceled. Or maybe, fortunately, as the reason seems to be that the History Channel wants to go back to running quality programming. According to MonsterQuest’s producer, “The official end of MonsterQuest did not happen because of any lack of topics or for lack of viewers. The Network has decided to go another direction to assure their future as a powerful force in television.”
I also like “Billy the Exterminator.” It stars Billy Bretherton and his family of Vexcon Extermination Company. If I recall, they had been featured in an episode or two of “Dirty Jobs” with Mike Rowe.
Nothing comes crappier than Hoarding. I’m mesmerized by the show: the squalor, the depth of self-denial by the hoarder, the frustration of the relatives . . . and yet I’m simultaneously repulsed to the point of nausea.
