Vast Wasteland or Pixels of Pleasure

It is that time of year again. The time of year when every once in a while there is a little nip in the air? The time of year when the leaves on the trees start to take on the tinge of the brilliant colors soon to come? The only time of the year when the Royals are not mathematically eliminated from the 2008 playoffs? Nope (well actually that Royals thing may be true). It is the time of year when the new television season starts.
I have always liked watching television. Most experts on children and youth would say I watched a mind-numbing amount of television growing up. Before anyone gets the wrong idea about the quality of my upbringing (after all, my mother reads this paper) I have to differ with those so-called experts. With apologies to Charlton Heston and company let me say, television doesn’t make people stupid, people make people stupid.
I learned a lot from television. I learned how to use the word “prehensile” in a sentence. Thank you Mr. Green Jeans. I learned a little about Wagnerian opera. Thanks to Elmer Fudd singing Kill the Wabbit. (It ain’t over until the transvestite rabbit sings.) I learned being a comedy writer for Alan Brady was the job I really wanted when I grew up. Thanks to Dick Van Dyke. I also learned forty-three minutes into each and every episode of the A-Team Mr. T would construct an amazing contraption capable of disabling an army of three thousand using only the parts of a 1959 Edsel Corsair.
A few years back my family gave up cable so for me the new season revolves around ABC, CBS, and NBC. It’s is kind of like my childhood all over again. We don’t even get PBS. Fox does come in on the television in the basement but that is my children’s turf.
I only venture down there around ten o’clock every night because none of my kids seem to understand that light switches can move in two directions. One direction means the light bulbs are given the power to make light which burns energy supplied by the electric company which in turn creates small pieces of paper which are mailed to my house causing my bank account to shrink. The other direction causes darkness. This means the electric company does not have to send energy into all those light bulbs for a full twenty-four seven which causes those little pieces of paper to suck less of the funds from my checking account. Is that so hard to understand?! Can you use one one hundredth of the energy it takes to text message those six letters which, in their own cryptic manner, impart more information than eighty-five pounds of Guttenberg type, and just flip the stupid switch!? (Sorry…lost control there for a second…I’m okay now.)
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the new television season is upon us. Here are some of my first impressions of the networks new offerings.
I watched The Big Bang Theory, or as I like to call it Two and a Half Minds. It is the story of two genius guys who are about as likely to attract gorgeous blonde paramours as it is likely to find the word paramour somewhere else in this newspaper. So, of course, a gorgeous blonde moves in across the hall. Now here comes the fantasy part of the show, she talks to them, willingly walks into their apartment and takes a shower in their bathroom. This only happens in television shows or those letters written to certain men’s magazines.
My favorite part of the show is the two main characters are named Sheldon and Leonard. This absolutely has to be an homage (for fifty bonus points find homage elsewhere in the paper) to Sheldon Leonard the producer of such classic sitcoms as The Danny Thomas Show, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. He made great shows, but he should have outsourced the task of devising the titles.
The only other show I’ve seen is Chuck. This show is about a computer nerd who is suddenly thrust into a world of espionage and intrigue. He also has a gorgeous blonde become a major part of his life. Do you see a trend here?
The people creating television shows must have been the guys in high school who couldn’t get a date but had active imaginations. I smell a new career path…