I’d Like to Ruin Television for You 2009-2010: Saturday/Sunday: suburban

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I’d Like to Ruin Television for You 2009-2010: Saturday/Sunday

Sep 13, 2009 21:15

I’d Like to Ruin Television For You: 2009-2010 Season: The Weekend

The weekend, to me, doesn’t matter, except it means I get to hang out with my friends who work for a living and I get my kids all day and all night until sitter/school on Monday mornings. So I don’t have much time for Television, much less anything else. However, I have researched what to watch, what to DVR, and what to avoid for the Saturdays and Sundays of lonely nights alone, warming your hands by the blue heat of the television.

Saturdays are lean on the original programming side, because execs understand that normal people go out and do things on Saturday night, so they don’t try to lure us in with Touched by an Angel or Covington Cross. Well, they don’t anymore. Saturdays is for Football and Reality TV. ABC is no exception as it gives us Saturday Night Football. College football, which is way more exciting than Professional American Football, so says I. Being a Buckeyes fan, I have a feeling I won’t have a good time watching any college football this year.

CBS is all about Crime and milking the cow until she’s dry, bleeding the turnip, and getting water from that rock. Crimetime Drama, as they so pluckily call it, consists of RERUNS of procedural police dramas, such as CSI, CSI:NY, CSI: Altoona, etc. They then follow CRIMETIME DRAMA with REAL crime with 48 Hours Mystery, a documentary of true crime in a 48-hour period. It helped usher in the age of the Reality program. I’m not knocking any of the programming, except, that in one sense, I am. It’s nothing new or original or exciting, just the bland leftovers of yesteryear.

FOX shows TWO episodes of COPS (holy crapola, that’s still on?), with America’s Most Wanted at 9:00 PM. Nothing new, borrowed, or blue; just old.

NBC gives us a documentary news program with Dateline NBC, which I watch when I remember to watch. Usually pretty good even if Stone Phillips’ voice makes my ears bleed. Just kidding, Stone. You keep doin’ what you’re doin’. They then give us ENCORES of shows they played earlier in the week. Trauma and Law and Order:SVU. I didn’t watch them earlier in the week, what makes you think I am going to give a shit about them on Saturday? Except to DVR Trauma. . . perhaps. I’ve been wrong before (oh have I), so maybe I will give Trauma a watch or two. I feel I will have to if my wife has anything to say about it (she also watches Ghost Whisperer and Two and a Half Men, so I am stuck).

SUNDAY

Oh, Lord, on this day of days to rest (if it were actually the day of rest, which it isn’t), please give me some of that sweet sweet pap of Sundertainment. And. . . Dammit!

ABC vomits out the same garbage as before, starting with America’s Most Horrible and Embarrasing Injuries, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (does it come with a fake Sears’ card?), Desperate (for ratings) Housewives, and Brothers and Sisters. And I watch none of them, neither should you. While DH used to have pretty sharp writing and wit, it has declined over the years. While last season did have some perky moments, it couldn’t keep my interest past five episodes.

NBC has NFL football, and unless the Pittsburgh Steelers (yeah, I’m one of THOSE!) are playing, I won’t be watching.

CBS shovels out 60 Minutes, which is still a great show despite Andy Rooney. On top of that is the Amazing Race, which used to be novel for a reality show, and is no longer. Follow it up with a helping of Three Rivers, a medical procedural drama in a fictional transplant hospital in Pittsburgh. I can see the titles now, “Kidney Beens”, “I Need a Heart from San Francisco”, “Give me my Spleen, Please!”, etc. I would not like it in a boat, on a moat, or with a goat. CBS caps off the night with Cold Case, which, again used to be a novel way of telling a story, but has grown somewhat stale - As with most network programming. However, creatives do face the trickiness of changing a show by adding more characters, creating implausible scenarios, or changing the structure of a winner, and by doing, taking a jump over that mighty shark.

FOX finishes up its NFL Sunday with a recap of the days highlights and immediately dives into Animation Domination, as it was called a few years ago. It sandwiches The Cleveland Show (a takeoff from Family Guy in which we follow the loveable Scrubs) between an ancient, toothless The Simpsons and the beat-a-dead-horse Family Guy. The Simpsons is probably my all-time favorite show. Of all-time. ALL-TIME. I used to be able to quote with the best of them. Alas, either I grew up (NEVER!) or the show declined in sharpness (say it ain’t so!). I believe that a mixture of both with a great heaping of competing with the faster paced LCD comedy of Family Guy did it in. Well, not did it in as in killed it, but accelerated the decline to what we have today. While it might never reach the heights it did in seasons two through six, it is still the smartest, funniest show on Sunday night. Oh yeah, American Dad also runs.

That’s it for this season, except for a quick rant I will do about midseason replacements, coming soon. I hope you enjoyed, or at least tolerated, this year’s I’d Like to Ruin Television for You.

You can hear a poorly produced audio version at brettfauver.multiply.com/music/