Growing up, before moving to South Korea, I didn't see my parents much. My dad, having five kids to support after I was born, took on a second job at Montgomery Ward. My mom was studying in school. That's why I often tell people I was raised more by my sisters than anyone else.
But that's really not true. My three half-sisters, being teenage girls, were not that interested in watching me all the time. So their solution? Set me in front of the television.

My parents, nor anyone in my family ever talked to me about drugs. No, it was Dr. Huxtable who told me to stay away from pot on "The Cosby Show." It was Dr. Drummond and Gary Coleman teaching me about racism on "Diff'rent Strokes." And can you believe Michael J. Fox had me believing I was a Republican? And when I was a little older, I watched these shows in South Korea, and the Armed Forces Network had no commercials -- they could squeeze three half-hour shows in an hour. I much more productive with my TV watching than the average American kid.
Those types of shows are what I like to watch anymore. And really, I have a hard time watching TV anymore. It's too difficult to schedule my time around when most shows come on so it has to be pretty damn good for me to actually make to to watch something. Rick told me how he might watch something but not want to wait another week for the next installment. I'm the same way -- when I find a Great Fucking Show, I want to be able to lose myself in a show, watching not just and episode at a time, but a whole season at a time. And like when I was a kid watching sitcoms, I want thses shows to mean something to me, and I want them to make me think.
And for it to earn the title of Great Fucking Show, it has to really mean something to me. Everyone knows how I feel about "Futurama," but it doesn't even get that title. I love that show because it fits my sense of humor, and I've hinted at how big a sci-fi nerd I was in my youth, and the show can really hit home for me.
But I'm talking about shows that I really feel a connection with -- where after watching an episode I'll be thinking about constantly until I can watch again. And my biggest fear becomes that I get hit by a bus or something and die before the show is at some sort of resolution point.
But there are no shows like that for me now. "Scrubs" I think of as a Great Fucking Show, but it really has run its course. "Six Feet Under" I think may be the best TV show I've ever seen, and I hadn't even seen an episode until after it went off the air. (Of course, watching all the episodes on DVD all at once really is the way to go.)
But that changed with a show that I really didn't expect to like this much, especially given the fact that I've been such a square, as evidenced by the fact that I just used the term "square." I had seen teasers to "Weeds" during my stops at motels earlier this summer. It looked like an interesting show. When I was at kc's last week she told me about it and how we could watch some episodes since she has Showtime OnDemand.
We watched the entire first season in one night.

I actually knew I was really going to like this show watching and listening to the opening credits. A great cast and clever writing, the show is damn funny as it comments on suburban conformity and hypocrisy, something I experienced, too. But the show also surprises when it reveals a lot of heart -- sure, then main character is a drug-dealing mom, but I know how much my own mother struggled when my father died (it's sort of the same reason I connected with "Six Feet Under"). If my mom felt she could provide for her family, I know she probably wouldn't have been opposed to peddling some chronic on the streets of OKC's Asian District.
And this weekend, back up in Lawrence, we watched again, this time with Erin and cl joining in -- just no one tell Bill Cosby we were watching a show about pot. And even though we didn't even get far enough into the season to when it really got good, it is clear why I could connect with this show. In reading stuff online I came across a few reviews that kind of slammed the show for its stereotyping, calling it unoriginal, and its use of racial stereotyping in its humor -- but that was the damn point! Growing up where I did I was pretty sensitive to stereotypes, that's why I love it when they can be turned on their ear, and disarmed with some humor (I also watched Sarah Silverman's "Jesus is Magic" last weekend: "Guess what, Martin Luther King, I had a fuckin' dream, too! I had a dream that I was in my living room." -- that was for you, kc).
And of course I don't have Showtime. At home we have HBO, but in the spirit of the show I'll still be watching the new season, which just started, through "alternative" methods. And really, I can get pretty much any show this way. So, wise readers, tell me: What are some other shows out there you watch? Anything you were able to connect with, I'd like to hear about it.
11 comments:
The first season of Weeds, especially after Andy enters the household, is phenomenal. It's amazing that the episodes are only half an hour long. With Sex and the City, it's probably the most densely packed 30 minutes of TV I've ever seen.
It's weird, but I didn't really pay much attention to all of the race issues the first time I saw it, but they really stood out to me as a major theme the second time. They're pervasive. Like Celia and Nancy are both Gentiles who married Jews, and Celia sleeps with a black man, and Nancy will probably sleep with the same guy, and the whole socio-economic thing with the Latina maids and the black drug dealers, and Sanjay is an Indian, and the various Asian characters ... And there's all this great hypocrisy about race and sexual identity (like how Celia, who displays some homo curiosity, is now flipping out because her young daughter wants to be gay ... "You can't become a lesbian just because you don't want to lose weight," she tells her ...hehe)
Carnivale on HBO. Did you ever see that, G?
I don't think there are any TV shows that I can really connect with at the level you are talking about. Of course I only have 7 channels and chances are half of those have a "reality" TV show on at a given time. Now granted there are some shows that I follow pretty closely like Lost, 24 and The Simpsons. But I have yet to find the show that I would classify as the 'Greatest Show Ever...'.
KC, you beat me to it! Carnivale was absolutely a show that made me not want to be hit by a bus. And then it got canceled.
I agree, kc. Andy joining the show lifted it from something really good to fucking great. We often talk about characters being the moral center of the narrative; I like to think of Andy as the amoral center -- without him the rest of the characters are like a group of comics doing a routine without a straight man to play off of. He exposes the rest of them and their hypocrisies. When he came on the show I thought he would be one of those character's you're supposed to love to hate, but I can't imagine the show without him now.
And I can't believe I didn't see all the race issues, either -- it was just woven so well into the story. The white soccer mom who drives the SUV, the black drug dealers, and even the Asian mistress of Dean's who "loved him long time," a movie quote that has always made me cringe considering my heritage.
One of my favorite moments of the show was when Nacy had to drive the "Hooptie," Conrad's beat up Oldsmobile, and she pulls up next to two black guys in a tricked-out Escalade blaring some hip-hop at an intersection, and responds by turning up the volume on her stereo and distrupting their song as NPR comes through their windows. Classic
I think one of you, or maybe both, have mentioned Carnivale to me a little while back. Sucks that it's another that's been canceled before I even saw an episode, but at least I can see it all on DVD.
And Chris, don't you remember the early '90s and a little show called "Star Trek"?
You know, Star Trek was cool and all, and I guess maybe at the time (a naive 18-20 year old kid) it would have connected w/ me but I am still not sure that it is the same type of connection that you have with Weeds. Of course we did go to a Trek convention...hmmm... Now movies on the other hand, I can think of several that have and do hit me everytime I watch it. Most of those movies have strong themes of redemption and forgiveness. This is probably why of the current TV shows Lost is as close as it comes to being that truely great show.
I liked what I saw of "Weeds." I haven't had a show of my own for a long time, either.
Of course, last year there was "Point Pleasant," a teen supernatural drama -- she was the child of Satan! Fighting the evil within! He was possibly the son of God! But he wanted her, bad!
And then Fox -- FOX! -- canceled it mid-season.
OH man, Sarah Silverman is the bees knees.
"When God gives you AIDS--and God does give you AIDS--make lemonAIDS."
Haven't seen Weeds myself, though Nick and M-A like it alot.
Yeah, cl, Fox can really screw up a good show. I didn't see much of "Point Pleasant," but "Firefly," created by the guy who did "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," was a fiasco. The first episode aired was the second; the pilot was aired the next week, making it confusing. And then it kept getting preempted for baseball. No fan base, and lasted half a season.
Danny, you might check out kc's post on Sarah Silverman. It's quite excellent.
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