Friday, October 12, 2018

Any show billed as "heartwarming" count me out.

Any show billed as "heartwarming," Count me out. Heart wrenching. Heart stopping, Heart healthy. Out. Out. Out.  Inspirational? Sorry, out.

Any dancing with the word Celtic attached to it. Out.  A row of stocky women dancing in unison using their hips and legs like pistons? (I don't know what pistons do but it sounds like they explode into action.) What if the dancers levitate and defy gravity?  Out.  Throw in all  precision dancing including the Rockettes. The beloved Rockettes? They practiced so hard. We don't care.  Buh, bye.

Any show where the hero's name ends in i as in Benji. I'm out. I do like to watch Lassie and Timmy in the old series for the politically and socially incorrect dialogue and behavior. The kids are left alone all day. They sleep in the woods with their head up against a log.  The fat kid is named Porky.  Grandpa calls the gypsies that squat on his land varmints.  

Any show presented by Hallmark.  Especially around Christmas.  Especially if a poor abandoned kid wants to be reunited with his father and the miracle of the Christmas Wish brings back a sad failed drunk.  In this vein, it's getting tedious watching Ellen give all that money to "deserving" people.  Ellen has devalued the dollar all by herself.   "You get ten thousand and you get ten thousand."  We might as well smush Christmas and Hallmark and Ellen together and call it Hellemas We don't have to fight about who gets to put up chreches and menorahs in the village square.  An all-inclusive holiday will be Hellemas and the symbol is a giant check made out to each of us from Shutterfly.  (Aside:  my daughter reminded me that George Bush sent everyone a check for $300 when he was president.)

I don't want to see any more sassy women in sit coms.  If I'm hungry for sass, I'll look up Leslie Jones on You-Tube, the queen of epic dangerous sass. I don't want to see any more clueless husbands either.   

I've never watched This Is Us because of the bowing and scraping when one of the actors wearing a mantle of preciousness does a guest spot. If anchors/hosts are genuflecting and professing bouts of sobbing I know there's fake greatness going on.  I made the mistake of watching hyper hyped Modern Family.  I saw a caricature of gay marriage. The kids have amazing insight. Annoying.  Sofia Vergara speaks ten decibels louder than everyone else. She's a bit of a bully, too. 

I sometimes watch very old shows on the Cozi Channel.  I saw an episode of Little House on the Prairie where the new schoolmaster who has an anger management problem begins beating hard on the kids with a stick and hates Laura. Riveting.  Hates Laura????????  I can only watch episodes of LHOTP before Mary goes blind.  Then she marries a blind man and I have to figure out how they do everything.   No.  Here's where I might condone a Christmas Miracle and a Shutterfly check. 

On Starttv, I've discovered re-runs of Medium- eerie and good. Cozi has Murder She Wrote, mindless and fabulous to accompany a late lunch.  The Nanny, still good (when you are up early.) Will and Grace- fresh the first time, tiresome and annoying now. Somebody please tell Debra Messing. The Rockford Files- Jimmy Garner is still engaging.   
You've still got it, girl










You-Tube special episodes of The Price is Right, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy are amusing. Only epic wins and epic fails.  Satisfying and often inappropriate.  

Note:  Recently I saw this sentence and it stopped me.  "Awake for sorrow and unsorrow."  I think about that sentence a lot and it makes me want to be a better writer.