I don’t give television much importance. But there are those times, in those common, light-conversation social situations, when the topic might come around to some television program.
God help me…I don’t watch any of those shows. Not ER, not West Wing, not any of the shows that just about everybody else watches. I can’t even smile and nod my head and fake it. I have the channels, oh yes, I do. But I never watch them.
And in those situations, when it would be so nice to have SOMETHING to say…I can only ask if anyone has watched the History Channel lately…or if they think the new season of Jonathan Creek looks good.
I’m not complaining or feeling guilty, but am I alone? Anybody else a popular show nerd?
I haven’t watched TV in years. Whenever I do see it at a friend’s house, it seems even dumber than the last time. I can actually sense my IQ taking a dip when in front of a TV.
When popular shows come up in conversation I simply sit and listen. If they ask me if I’ve seen it I say no. If they ask why, I tell them because I don’t have a TV. If they press even further, I’ll tell them that I find TV stupid and not worth my time.
I’ve never seen Friends, Seinfeld, Survivor, Two Guys and a Girl, Ally McBeal, Dharma & Greg, etc., etc. etc. I hate primetime TV. The only TV I really watch anymore consists of MTV2, old SNL reruns, the Discovery Channel, and sometimes TLC. I only watch about an hour a day, though. I’d rather sleep than watch TV.
It seems to me that television programming in general has taken a turn for the worst since “Survivor.” I couldn’t even watch the local news channel in the mornings because they wouldn’t shut up about that show–it got to the point that the traffic guy was reporting not on major traffic situations but on the latest “Survivor”-esque activity program in the area.
TLC used to be one of my favorite channels too. Lately, however, their choice of programs seems to be limited to such trash as “Greatest Conspiracies of All Time,” “Wild Police Videos,” and “A Wedding Story (Part 24).”
Well…I don’t own a TV…not for any elitist reasons; I just don’t find it an interesting thing to do. When I’m at someone else’s house & watching, I do enjoy stupid stuff like “Cops.”
I’ve never seen Survivor, Friends, or any of those other ones. It’s amazing how often TV comes up in conversation. My friends are trained, though…mostly they remember I don’t have access to that popular idiom (TV) and edit their conversations.
The Simpsons is probably the most mainstream thing I watch. Others I try not to miss include Win Ben Stein’s Money, and the UK version of Whose Line Is It Anyway (preferrably not the epsidoes which lack Ryan Stiles and Colin Mockery.)
Over the last month or so, I’ve become a Ballykissangel junkie, and The Royle Family was entertaining this past Friday. I should probably check out Jonathan Creek. It looks a treat.
You are hardly alone. There are a lot of us “Prime-time Nerds” out here. We haven’t had the “pleasure” of watching the so-called popular stuff since the early '80’s which makes that water-cooler conversation a little strange! We are movie buffs, though. So when it’s time to veg out in front of the tube, it’s a movie (or a good book!)
Actually, I never watched TV, not even as a kid; according to my parents, they’d plonk me down in front of Sesame Street or cartoons and I’d wait until they weren’t looking and crawl away. They tell this story often because, of course, I blame them for not making me watch it. It’s almost impossible to carry on a casual conversation with my peer group without knowing at least about Gilligan’s Island and Fantasy Island and Love Boat so forth. Never mind ER and all that.
I really started to notice the problem in college; in high school, I hung out with stranger people, I guess, but in college it became very obvious that every single teenager in the country shared an enormous wealth of popular culture knowledge. I felt left out. I tried making long lists of facts about all the shows, and memorizing them - thus the Gilligan’s Island et al references above - but it didn’t help; I still didn’t have a favorite character and I still couldn’t sing the theme songs. I gave up after a humiliating incident in the dorm cafeteria, wherein I believed that my friends were making fun of me by telling me about a non-existent show. It really did not seem possible that this thing could be real. So convinced was I that I went from table to table, asking random strangers if they’d ever heard of it, and I after the third yes I realized that a) everyone, including all my friends, was laughing at me and b) it was indeed a real show.
(The show, by the way, was Hee Haw. It still doesn’t seem like it could be a real show.)
Solution: learn about movies instead. That’s what I did. Now, when people ask if I’ve seen the latest Party of Five or whatever, I say “Nope, don’t watch it. But I did see [insert recent movie release here].” Problem solved - and it’s much easier and more fun than memorizing lists.