Sunday, October 18, 2009

Television . . . I Guess I'll get the Ball Rolling: An Introduction

I love television. A lot of people do . . . I'm pretty sure I'm not a minority on this.

When I was growing up my father constantly told my siblings and I that "it turns your brain to mush". Consequently, we were never allowed to watch it on school nights. We didn't even have cable (no, this is not considered child abuse, I checked), so when my friends at school were talking about the latest episode of "Doug" or "Ren and Stimpy", I was trying to strike up a conversation about a re-run of "Mr. Belvedere" . . . a show that, apparently, no one my age has ever heard of . . . probably because they had cable. ( Did I mention I went to a private school with a bunch of rich kids)

Sometimes I think the TV deprivation I suffered through as a child has made me hopelessly addicted to it. My vice is sitcoms. I love them most of all. I like the old ones, the new ones . . . sometimes I even watch the bad ones (mostly to make fun of them).

When I was little I was a huge fan of "Gilligan's Island", (the aforementioned) "Mr. Belvedere", "I Love Lucy", and many others, I can't seem to think of at the moment.

Then when I was in my tweens I became addicted to Nick at Nite (probably because we finally got a satellite dish, thanks to my big brother). I watched "Newhart", " The Bob Newhart show", "Rhoda", "The Dick Van Dyke Show", "Happy Days" . . . the list goes on.

Finally, as I got older, I loved the shows most people loved: "Seinfeld", "Friends" . . . hmm, those are the only ones that come to mind at the moment.

Nowadays I watch "The Office", "Community", "Parks and Recreation" ( I know a lot of people don't like this one, but I think you should give it a chance), and "How I Met Your Mother".

So here we are, Myself, and a few other bloggers who also love Television have decided to write down our thoughts on episodes of different shows . . . some old . . . some new . . . whatever we feel like really.

We hope you enjoy it, tell your friends about it, tell strangers about it and so on and so on . . .

Posted by Madelyn . . . Fellow bloggers are welcome to edit any grammatical errors I may have overlooked.

6 comments:

Syar said...

I should RSS feed this thing so that I would at least know that we had a name already! Hah, Syar fail.

Thanks for getting the ball rolling, Madelyn. If I were cleverer I'd tie that in to the fact that your personal blog is named bowlingexpress. But I'm not. I am so sorry.

All the cool Internet kids (hipsters) seem to *LOVE* Mr Belvedere, so you might be ahead of the curve. As a child growing up in Malaysia, whatever TV I got, cable, not-cable, weeknight, weekend was all leftovers from you guys 5 years too late.

I never liked Ren and Stimpy much anyway. I know! Again, I am so sorry.

cadiz12 said...

I never understood the Ren and Stimpy thing, either. Maybe it was past my time? I, of course, still think Jem is truly, truly, truly outrageous.

But Belvedere? That was CLASSIC. I still chuckle to myself whenever I think about Wesley, that little scamp.

Madelyn said...

Yea! Comments!

Jen said...

Mr. Belvedere, Charles in Charge—all of them are classics. I'd take them over Ren and Stimpy any day.

And yes, Jem is truly outrageous.

Jon said...

I don't believe I ever truly received my due for bringing the Muller house into the 21st century with satellite television. It ranks #2 all time on my list of greatest accomplishments. It just fell a few weeks ago when I tricked Karen into accepting my marriage proposal.

Nadia said...

Jon: I'm glad you ranked those in the correct order.

""Parks and Recreation" ( I know a lot of people don't like this one...)"

It's a real shame, because P&R has really found its footing this season as the middle ground between the pseudo-realism of The Office and the no-holds-barred absurdist sense of 30 ROCK (e.g. the Spitzer/Sanford-inspired news report at the start of the Duke Silver episode could easily been cribbed from Tina Fey's notes).