Hoofnagle.org

So my mom is staying with us. You all knew that. But what you hadn't probably thought about is what that does to our tv watching and food eating habits. On the food front in fast summary, we eat at the dinner table and not in front of the tv or computer. We cook more,cook less spicy food, order out less and mom's big change is that she drinks wine with us at dinner where she never would on her own.

Then there's tv.

I know my mother thinks I'm nuts. We all know I an incredibly fussy about TV. Mostly I don't like it. A series has to be really escapist or really really well written to hold my attention. Mom likes The Practice and one or two other drama series that are not ill written but I simply cannot watch. I left the room the other night rather than sit in the same headspace with a one hour no-closure generating episode involving a horrible accident and a major character with a serious head injury. Thanks, but I've had the experience of sitting in the hospital, talking to doctors and reading to someone in a coma. I don't need to pretend about it. And last night there was something where a lawyer had gotten a client off on a charge of strangling little girls even though she knew he did it. And then naturally he killed again and somehow I WAS SUPPOSED TO CARE. Oh look, an ethical dilema. How riveting. I could have written the whole fucking episode myself after the first 4 minutes.

So, fair enough, I'm queasy on the subject of nasty story arcs in so called prime time dramas. Reconcile this with the fact that I can happily sit down to watchNatural Born Killers without trouble. My mother doesn't say much, but I suspect she believes I'm just being arbitrary. There is a difference though: I can sit through almost anything that guarantees to have a point or some closure inside a 2-4 hour window. Violent movies that are just gory I will cheerfully turn off or walk out of. But Natural Born Killers is a slap in the face about how we worship violence. Reservoir Dogs (another butchery fest) is about faith and trust and the voilence is a useful tool. Anyhow, I guess my problem is I don't want to watch pointless violence and I'm unwilling to promise to tune in next week to find out what happens next. I usually feel that script writers are trying to con me into caring what happens next week instead of presenting the best THIS week possible. It annoys me. Anyhow, I'm high maintenance. We knew that.

But for the record I am consistent in my high maintenanceness. And these days I'm watching almost no tv.

Posted by karen at March 11, 2003 12:00 AM