Monsters of Television

This was me. I was just as adorable, too.

I was sick this past weekend. I had a sore throat that made it difficult to swallow even saliva, let alone food. I was, paradoxically, suffering from both a stuffy and a runny nose, I had chest and head congestion, I had a fever, and by Saturday night, was pretty much unable to maintain a lucid conversation with someone over the phone. I had somewhat improved by Sunday, thanks to different over the counter medications, though the fever remained.

As is the case with some people when they’re sick, I turned to television to be my nursemaid, particularly on Saturday during the worst of it, to keep me company, to tell me that I was, very likely, not going to die as a result of teh_sick. Typically my habit is to watch stuff I have on DVD, with my normal standbys being Sports Night and Batman: The Animated Series. Both shows are comfort foods of mine, and I know the episodes by heart so that if I zone out or fall asleep, I haven’t “missed” anything.

But thanks to advances in technology since the last time I was this sick (which has easily been at least 5 years), I didn’t have to drag my sick and feeble body off the couch or out of bed to change the discs of whatever I was watching. I could just hit ‘Next episode’ on Netflix and remain curled up in blankets, cats, used tissues, and mugs of tea.  It. Was. Wonderful.

So here are thoughts about what I watched over the weekend. I watched, by the way, entirely too much stuff. Really. It’s kind of pathetic. Read more »

I’m not a fan of the mockumentary sitcom. It’s become a barrier of entry for me with shows like Parks and Recreation and Modern Family. Indeed, I think it’s a crutch that sitcoms are starting to rely on, much to their detriment. I was going to let my dislike of the format speak through my silence on the shows.

But then Matthew Gilbert over at the Boston Globe had to go and poke the bear. Gilbert extolls the format for providing the “still-needed alternative for the sitcom genre as a whole” and for shows that use the format as the “essential weapons in the battle against sitcom predictability.” And he pays the shows that use the format the ultimate compliment by declaring them “anti-sitcoms.”

At this point, I feel it’s best to crank the laugh track dial up to 11. Read more »