I cannot believe the garbage they make me watch on TV these days. Do they think we’re morons or something?
Take, for example, that show Soul Man. Every week, I think it can’t get any worse, and somehow, it does. In last week’s episode, Tim Allen’s character from Home Improvement dropped in on Reverend Mike and the gang (again) and wreaked havoc when he tried to repair the church’s electrical wiring. It was so dumb, I nearly turned it off!
Things weren’t much better on NBC last Monday night, when four straight shows—Suddenly Susan, Caroline In The City, The Naked Truth and Fired Up—all had practically the same exact plot. Are the people who make these shows that unoriginal? I’m at the point where I can predict almost every line Caroline is going to say to Richard. And, with all the repeats they run, by the second or third time around, I can almost recite an episode’s whole darn script! Who needs that?
Then there was that week-long Harper Valley PTA marathon on TNT. I could barely get through it. I mean, it’s rough enough having to watch one episode of that lousy show, but 30? Come on!
It’s gotten so bad of late, I’ve had to upgrade from basic to expanded cable. I figured that with expanded cable, I’d finally get something to watch that wasn’t just a big waste of time. But was I ever wrong! Now, I get 65 channels, and each one is even more idiotic than the last. From Encore to Court TV to Animal Planet to HBO, I’ve watched enough hours of every single one to definitively conclude that they’re all worthless. And for this, I have to pay $52.35 a month!
I stayed up until 4 a.m. yesterday, and it was the same darn junk all night long. I eventually got so fed up with all the Cheers reruns, psychic-hotline infomercials and World War II documentaries, I grabbed the remote control and shouted, ’No more! I can’t take another minute of this!’ and turned on The Learning Channel instead. But it was no use: Those same old UFO pseudo-documentaries were on, and they were as insufferable as ever.
And, as if the shows aren’t bad enough, you also have to sit through all those commercials. Last night, I was watching TV Censored Bloopers ’98, and I counted 46 commercials during that one show alone! Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard?
I’ve decided I can’t take all this terrible TV anymore, so I’m going to stay home from work next week to write letters to the networks. I’ll tell them what I’ve been saying ever since I got through watching all six seasons of that stupid show Gimme A Break—that television is worthless.
My first letter will concern this new Tom Selleck show The Closer, which is the stupidest show on all of television, much less the shows on CBS I set my VCR for on Monday nights. I simply cannot understand why anyone would want to watch it, especially episodes like the one in which Alex tries to kick-start her dad’s romantic life by setting him up with her snowboarding coach, and it turns out that—well, I won’t ruin the ending in case you haven’t seen it yet.
