Cool Beans

With so many cheesy shows making their way to primetime (ie., K-Ville, Cavemen, Bionic Woman), and considering NBC’s Thursday lineup holds the only new shows I watch (My Name Is Earl, The Office), I’m opting for TV on DVD over the most running shows.

My nights aren’t being spent watching primetime soap operas like Desperate Houswives, Brothers and Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy or its identically over-dramatic spin-off, Private Practice. I’m popping in discs of the old trusties that have never let me down: Arrested Development, Lost and even Scrubs (until it returns this week for its final season).

Before now, I didn’t understand why anybody would ever buy seasons of television shows on DVD. But now I know. Primetime TV has taken a dump. There are a few current shows that people will remember ten years from now. In the following decades, how many people are going to be heard saying, "Dude, do you remember that old show Cold Case? I really miss that one," or, "CSI: Miami-they just don’t make them like that anymore."

What we’ve got now are game shows featuring washed-up boy band stars making audience members do karaoke or soul-patched bald guys offering greedy people vast sums of money, B-list movie stars resorting to risqué USA network crime dramas and premium channel raunchy and vulgar dramadies about dirty people you’d want nothing to do with.

But now I see it. I’m the sap paying for what I can see for free on TV. I’m the guy who’s not watching the new network programs, but purchasing reruns at my command. Instead of following new storylines, I’m re-watching J.D. and Elliot’s on-again, off-again relationship, Earl inappropriately scratch bad things off his list and Jim and Pam pull pranks on Dwight and Andy-in sequential order.

I’ve become "that guy." After seeing decent shows like Law and Order and CSI take a drive up Multiple Spin-off Alley, I’m more than happy to pay for my TV.