TV And Me

I am not what you would call a huge fan of TV. I have some shows that I watch (The Office, Weeds, How I Met Your Mother, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia) but I prefer to wait until they come out on DVD and watch entire seasons at once. It doesn't bother me that I'm a year behind. There isn't a show that I make enough of a priority to watch every week, for these reasons:

1. I don't like being a slave to TV- I would never want to be in a situation where I chose not to go golfing, play pickup ball, hang out with friends, or creep around middle school girls' volleyball games- because The Office was coming on at 8:00. TV can wait (unless, of course, we're talking about sports. Alex could need my help putting out a small grease fire in the kitchen that was on the verge of jumping the counter, but if the Red Sox had the tying run on 3rd base in the 9th inning, she'd be on her own.)

2. That said, IF there was a show good enough currently on the air, I would make the sacrifice to watch it every week. Back when Ed was on NBC, a bunch of us got together religiously every Wednesday night to watch, and this was at a time in our lives when we all had much more going on (read: getting shitfaced.) Freshman year, I'm pretty sure Jake skipped a final exam because the season finale was on at the same time, and we saw in the previews that Ed was going to kiss Carol Vessey before she left on a summer-long trip with Dennis Martino. (Son of a bitch Dennis Martino! That guy still pisses me off....damn that show was awesome.)

However, since Ed got the axe 5 years ago, I have yet to find a show that would make me drop everything to watch it every week. However, that might also be due to my getting older and just liking TV less. But don't people our age usually start to settle down and watch more TV at night? I feel like most of my friends are doing that. I don't know, maybe I just liked TV more when I was younger. I should note that Freshman year of college, we would also get together to watch The Real World every week, a television program that I believe represents everything that is wrong with America today. I don't know what that says about me/us, maybe I just liked TV more back then.

3. I don't like watching TV shows on the internet. As much as I am in love with watching sports on the internet (with all the viewing options on the Masters website, it is officially better to be at work than to be at home for the first two rounds) for me, TV shows just don't translate well.

4. I don't have TiVo. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have it, but that would result in placing a call to the cable company- who would then realize that we're getting free cable in our apartment through some glitch in the Matrix. I've been living on my own for 8 years now, and I've yet to receive a cable bill (ssshhhh! that was a secret!) I'll be damned if I start paying for cable now.


So, what the hell is the point of all this? I recently finished watching the first five seasons of The Sopranos on DVD, roughly 10 years after it premiered. And although I haven't yet seen the dramatic sixth season, I can sum up my feelings in one word or less: meh.

I'm sure this is a case of something being hyped up to the point where it couldn't do anything but disappoint me; plus the fact that I know all about the controversial ending to the show probably doesn't help, but I think it's more than that. I honestly don't know what all the fuss was about regarding this show. It's definitely good; I mean, we raced through five whole seasons pretty quickly, but it's not the be-all end-all TV I thought it would be when we began our Sopranos odyssey.

It's especially disappointing because I am a huuuuge fan of mafia stories. The Godfather is my favorite book of all-time- I've read it 10 times in 9 years and it's not even close to getting old. Goodfellas is my favorite movie** and my unofficial top 50 would be littered with gangster movies.

{**I should clarify that it's my favorite movie because it's the one I've watched most recently. I've accepted that I can't have an absolute, hands-down, #1 all-time favorite movie, because I'm too easily influenced. I'm like an eight year old. I'll watch The Departed, proclaim it my favorite movie ever, and go around rocking a fake Boston accent for a week telling people "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself." Then I'll watch He Got Game, proclaim THAT to be my favorite movie, and spend the next month shooting hoops at random outdoor parks, speaking in ebonics, and pretending that I'm in Coney Island and I'm the #1 high school recruit in the country. Then I'll watch Return of the Jedi and proclaim THAT to be the best movie ever, and soon I'm dressed up in full-on Jedi apparel, using my 9-iron as a lightsaber and trying to use the Jedi mind-trick on Alex: "You are going to make me tuna casserole for dinner. Search your feelings, you know this to be true." So bottom line, I don't have an official all-time favorite movie.}


I think the most telling sign of my apathy towards The Sopranos is that we finished the fifth season a while back, and I've felt no motivation to rush out and rent the sixth and final season. That is crazy to me. So Sopranos fans, is the sixth season so amazing that it can pull a Lloyd Christmas trading in the Shaggin' Wagon for a moped and TOTALLY REDEEM ITSELF!....or is it a situation where if I haven't caught the Sopranos fever yet, it's too late now? Should I even bother with the last season?