Reply To: Telemavision (TV).
I lived several years without a TV in my apartment. When I got my house, I got a TV for the living room and would watch the Yankee games and some other stuff, but nothing major. Then the cable company offered us a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) free for 6 months. They may as well have stuck a needle directly into my veins. Now I’m back to being a TV junkie. My current recording/watching schedule:
Big Bang Theory
How I Met Your Mother
Heroes
Boston Legal
World Series of Poker
Pushing Daisies
Survivor
Simpsons
Family Guy
Other shows not currently showing I have “Season Passes” for:
LOST
The Boondocks
The Venture Brothers
High Stakes Poker
Scrubs
Dirt
Breaking Bad
The Riches
The latter two are my pet shows that I don’t think are watched as much as the other “cool” shows on my list, and can’t recommend them enough.
Breaking Bad only had 8 or so episodes; the first season was cut short by the writer’s strike, but it is the blackest of black humor. There is at least one moment per episode where I think “I can’t believe I’m laughing at this”. It’s a storyline path that is exactly what these “critically acclaimed basic cable shows” were made for: Man who is beaten down by line, could have been a successful chemist but marraige, money, and the world forces him to be a high school teacher with an extra job to make ends meet has a detached wife, a teeanger with MS and an obnoxious DEA agent brother in law … and suddenly, terminal stomach cancer that gives him six months to live. The day he finds out, brother in law is on TV in the news for busting a major Meth lab and the cameras show how sloppy they do it, yet how much money they make. Man decides not to tell his family about the cancer, but wants to leave them in a good position financially, if they’re going to be without their provider; he goes about making the best Meth ever. Hilarity ensues. Well, not really, it’s a portrait of a worldbeaten man and the lengths he will go to. Fantastic writing.
The Riches has had two seasons, and just unbelievable acting. The writing is also great, tho it occasionally will have a contrived plot hole. But all five actors who play the members of the Malloy family; gypsy-like “travellers” who accidentally end up taking over the life of a wealthy family (the titular “Riches”) in a gated suburban community, just absolutely CHEW UP the screen. Who knew that (English actors) Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard could be such convincing deep, tormented Southeners?!?