television

[CadmiumYellow]

everyone watches dumb shows, right? here's some updates on mine:

next week on the hills is a wedding episode !!

john and kate plus 8 are totally getting divorced i think 

on greek two members of rival fraternities are like. getting along suddenly? pretty unbelievable

i also watched one ondemand episode of the mtv reality show about kids at a creative high school, i forget the name of it. they dance and sing and go out with each other and get rejected sometimes.

[Pube Truth]

Been watching The Mighty Boosh onDemand. Everyone who can, should. Right now there are only two episodes on, but I'm sure there will be more to come.

[Infinite Jerkgrinders]

The only thing that might come close to bad television that i've been watching is 'Legend of the Seeker' which, while initially possessing the same level of lameness as say SG-1, also turned out to be quite exciting.

I also watch Southland, though I've been kind of disappointed the last couple episodes

[TheOfficer]

everyone watches dumb shows, right? here's some updates on mine:

next week on the hills is a wedding episode !!

john and kate plus 8 are totally getting divorced i think 

on greek two members of rival fraternities are like. getting along suddenly? pretty unbelievable

i also watched one ondemand episode of the mtv reality show about kids at a creative high school, i forget the name of it. they dance and sing and go out with each other and get rejected sometimes. it sounds like a lot happens, but somehow the show is actually not that exciting. it wasn't my fault though, an made me watch it.

If eamonn and I had cable, I'd make him watch the same types of wonderfully delicious yet dumb shows you watch. Almost exactly.
I have been avidly following the whole jon and kate thing online and I was so sad I couldnt watch the premiere.

[FAGGOT WATCHIN TRON]

What is happening with Jon and Kate??? That is terrible! Although I always thought that they secretly hated each other. She's such a bitch.

I've recently discovered that I love Sex and the City, so I've been watching reruns of that. I guess that is the worst TV I watch.

[Shire Le Buff]

Man, Kate's such a raging bitch on that show. John's not amazing by any means but I've really learned to loathe Kate.

[oatmeal fetish....]

Gilmore Girls is always on when I work!

Plus I've seen most of it its all reruns now.

[WWW.SETH.COM]

Entertainment: the J&K + 8

Back before the turn of the millennium, my husband and I wrote a book that contained a lot of lists of the best and worst of the last thousand years. Our friend Alfred Gingold contributed “Ten Worst Ideas of the Millennium,” which included flagellants, foot binding, wine in a box, trench warfare and French mime.

I was thinking about that list the other day when I was reading about the crisis on the set of “Jon & Kate Plus Eight.” This is, of course, the reality series about the Gosselins, who used fertility treatments to conceive twins, and then sextuplets. After four televised years of birthday parties and projectile vomiting during flu season, Jon & Kate’s marriage appears to have hit the rocks of tabloid hell.

And in the process, although we are only nine years into the 21st century, I believe we have already discovered two of the new millennium’s 10 worst ideas:

•

Fertility treatments that produce enough babies to field an entire team for any sport except tennis.

•

Reality shows about the day-to-day lives of any family that is not headed by an aging rock star.

“One day my kids are gonna Google me,” moaned Jon, who was caught frolicking with a 23-year-old teacher while Kate was off on a book tour. After weeks of headlines in supermarket magazines, the Gosselins were back on TV this week for the opening of Season Five (Theme: Sextuplets Turn 5, Jon and Kate Aren’t Speaking). It drew a stratospheric cable audience of 9.8 million viewers — approximately five times the ratings for “Mad Men.”

This is a tradition that stretches back to 1971, when Bill and Pat Loud agreed to let PBS film 300 hours in the life of their “fun family.” By the time the cameras left, the Louds were en route to the cover of Newsweek and Pat had filed for divorce. But Americans have no sense of history and now people are practically begging to be turned into a TV series. A number of the current ones involve very large families — one terrifyingly named “18 Kids and Counting.”

Once science made it so much easier for people to have six, seven, eight babies at a time, it seems right that the world would come up with some occupation that would allow the parents to make a living without leaving the nursery. The Gosselins were reportedly paid at least $50,000 an episode, and the family has moved into a $1.1 million house on 24 acres in Pennsylvania.

I can’t help suspecting that the audience for “Jon & Kate” was initially drawn to the show by the same fascination that compels cable TV to keep producing documentaries about people who weigh 800 pounds. Wow, how does that work out, practically speaking? But reality shows, like any kind of institutionalized gossip, also offer the occasional useful life lessons.

One of the most important is that people who embrace 21st-century public life, whether it is lived on Twitter or TLC, aren’t allowed to complain about the downside. (“I did not sign up for public scrutiny of everything and neither did Kate,” Jon told the TV cameras grumpily and inaccurately.)

Recently, as the marriage continued to fray, Kate’s brother and sister-in-law appeared on CBS’s “The Early Show” to denounce the Gosselins and call for a law against children on reality shows. The kids actually seem well cared for and happy, although you can already imagine how the sextuplets will be tortured in the future by reruns of the potty-training episode. The relatives mainly seemed distressed by a family feud and compelled to work out their angst by going on national TV to denounce people going on national TV.

My favorite angle is the feminist one. When the world first met the Gosselins, Kate was a more-than-full-time-mother and Jon was going off to work every day as an “I.T. analyst.” (This is a position which is actually a very common occupation for men on reality series. Women tend more toward “Pilates instructor.”)

Then Jon, who appears laid back to the point of being comatose, lost his job. Kate, who was a tad obsessive in the house (she once berated her husband for breathing too loud), produced several best-selling books and made so many promotional tours that her husband found himself in the role of the major caregiver.

By the time they started their current season, Jon’s life crisis was a mirror image of the feminine “problem that has no name” that Betty Friedan wrote about in 1963. He complained that he loved his kids but felt trapped. (“It’s not what I chose, you know. It was kind of chosen for me.”) Kate couldn’t understand why he seemed to resent his “duties” when she was out working to support the family. And anyway, he had lots of household help.

There’s much to mull. But at minimum, when a listmaker of the future starts compiling the Ten Worst Multiple-Birth-Reality-Show-Meltdowns-of-the-Millennium, the Gosselins will have found a place in history.

[Larry Flyntz]

Weeds' new season starts June 8!  And Showtime's new show called Nurse Jackie (starring Edie Falco) debuts afterwards!  YAY

[Pube Truth]

Gilmore Girls is always on when I work!

Plus I've seen most of it its all reruns now.

Was watching Harry Potter on ABCFamily and there was some sort of promo for new episodes of Gilmore Girls airing on that channel. You're welcome Ethan.

[Famous Hogbert]

This is actually Megan but I am too warm and sleepy to sign out of Eamonn's name. You can watch the pilot for Nurse Jackie on youtube.
I just did and it looks like showtime is going to put out another deliciously addicting show, the fuckers.

Enjoy, its only a half hour. I'm laughing forever at Peter Facinelli.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGyWMdCWUrc

[WWW.SETH.COM]

I do like Mad Men, especially because all the characters are unapologetically jerks. I did not know I was in love with the fifties, but I have been getting kind of blue ever since the fifties stopped returning my phone calls. FYI, the show takes place in the transition period between the very late fifties and the early sixties. The current season takes place in 1963.

And you bring up one the aspects of what makes Mad Men so good: the unromanticized nature of the time period. The American Dream exists only as an ideal that the characters either use to sell ideas or justify their amoral life choices. Nobody is happy, nobody is satisfied, nobody is really in in love and that's what elevates Mad Men beyond a typical drama. There are no answers, just pitches, hollow excuses for real meaning in a world devoid of an attainable mythology. It's the quest for success and meaning that drives the characters in Mad Men. They all want something and that's part of what makes the show so good.

[Infinite Jerkgrinders]

Currently, I'm quite enjyoing 'Defying Gravity' and I highly recommend it to anyone. you can find the episodes on Hulu. Also excellent is 'Resuce Me' though Hulu no longer carries all episodes

[Larry Flyntz]

I finally caught on to the awesomeness of Rescue Me.  I need to play some serious catch up, though.

Also, the first season of Nurse Jackie was excellent.  Find some way to pirate it or something, because it's definitely worth watching.

[Infinite Jerkgrinders]

I finally caught on to the awesomeness of Rescue Me.  I need to play some serious catch up, though.

Also, the first season of Nurse Jackie was excellent.  Find some way to pirate it or something, because it's definitely worth watching.

yeah most definitely wanted to watch more after i saw the first episode. Forgot about it though because I was unable to find pirate versions at the time, will try again!

And yes, Rescue Me is awesome for sure ... in a 'fuck you up then make you laugh' sort of way

[Pube Truth]

TV was toooo good last night. The Office, Community, Always Sunny....Oh, and Starship Troopers was also on. Ka-mazing.


PS...did anyone else watch community or was anyone else planning on watching it later?

[Infinite Jerkgrinders]

TV was toooo good last night. The Office, Community, Always Sunny....Oh, and Starship Troopers was also on. Ka-mazing.


PS...did anyone else watch community or was anyone else planning on watching it later?

Also "Fringe" started its 2nd season last night.  I highly recommend watching the first season before jumping in, but its an excellent show.

[Larry Flyntz]

I was slightly unimpressed with Sunny last night, but perhaps that's because it was a relatively Charlie-light episode, and Charlie is totally my faves.

Every time I see the kitten mittens commercial, I start laughing hysterically.

[Pube Truth]

Yes, it wasn't the best Sunny I've seen, but the fact that it was on was a contributing factor to the awesome TV night I had. I actually liked the show a whole lot more before Danny Devito was in every episode. I think he contributes a whole lot and his presence is probably a huge factor in the show's longevity, but I liked the simplicity of the earlier episodes.

[oatmeal fetish....]

New House was awesome.

New office was terrific.

Hitler was right.