People have been talking about fall TV and I started to think that the whole idea, which was once basically a core touchstone of consensus reality for me (and for a lot of people) is slowly fading away. Certainly the whole "start of the TV season" does not mean today what it did 30-ish years ago when networks put on TV shows to announce their new TV shows and the fall preview issue of TV Guide was a publishing event on a par with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or the fashion glossies monster sized fall/spring new collection issues. Obviously this isn't news to anyone, that there's a difference between being 3 of 3 and being 3 of 300. Every once in a while I'm reminded that there's a shared experience of TV viewing which I've excluded myself from. I was exchanging emails with a friend over the summer and it happened to come up that they didn't have a TV and how now there were so many different possible relationships to TV and other forms of entertainment that their kids were not instantly marked as weirdo outsiders because they didn't watch TV. Which was certainly not the case back when we were kids.
This is getting long. The horrible truth about my TV habits cont'd under the cut
So none of that is to say that I don't watch plenty of TV. It's just almost all stuff that exists outside the confines of the "season" as defined by US broadcast networks. The only non-reality series that I watch is the Simpsons which for me is still the funniest half-hour on TV and can only be said to have slipped in comparison to itself. Every once in a while, curiosity compels me to check out what passes for successful sitcoms these days and, honestly, you'd have to pay me to get me to watch most of that crap.
I used to be a big Adult Swim fan back a few years ago but most of their recent offerings have, frankly, struck me as godawful and unfunny. I am pleased that they continue to show Futurama and that they're running Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law again (not any new episodes yet but the reruns may be leading up to a new series). Just saw the premiere of a show that looks like it's got potential, Lucy, Daughter of the Devil. The titular antichrist is a hipster chick. Her dad, Satan, owns a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants. There's a trio of homicial nuns & priests trying to hunt down Lucy. And Jesus seems to have come back as a club DJ who spices up his sets by performing "near-icles." The animation is a mix of drawn and CGI (or it's CGI that looks drawn) and not amateurish scribbles or recycled clips from the HB storage locker, so that's a refreshing change as well.
Other current faves are Good Eats, Mythbusters, No Reservations and Iron Chef America. We were on a big Ninja Warrior kick over the summer but now that we've seen all those, it's more wallpaper. We still watch Survivor which has been good the last couple of seasons after a long slow decline. I'm intrigued by the upcoming series in China, just because it's not their usual tropical paradise setting. And I'm really looking forward to the Next Iron Chef which sounds like it'll be Top Chef but with actual working chefs as contestants, including several form ICA challengers (inc. Michael Symon, Traci Des Jardins, Aaron Sanchez) and Michael Ruhlman is one of the judges.
Finally, there's TV that we don't watch on TV -- shows from networks we don't get or shows which are no longer on the air that we watch on DVD. We're working our way thru the Ken Burns series Jazz. I just recently picked up the complete Invader Zim series. And we're patiently awaiting the release of season 3 of Project Runway. Oh yeah and in my copious free time, I'm thinking I'd like to get caught up on the several seasons of the Wire that have all run after we stopped getting HBO.
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