Why I Can’t Watch
Todays TV Shows
 |
| Now which one is Laura and which is Lori? |
Maybe I’m
just old. Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe today’s actors, writers and directors
suck.
First the
characters in shows today all look alike.
Even mothers and daughters look the same age and have the same hair
color and hair style. To make things
even more confusing all the names are similar…Laura, Lauren, Ben, Bob, Rob,
Marylou, Maryann.
Who can tell
who from friggin who?
If all this
confusion is not enough, some acting genius has decided that whispering is
dramatic and dramatic is good….except now along with not knowing who is friggin
who, we don’t know what friggin who is saying to who!
OK, I have
learned that if I really concentrate and turn the volume up to 73 I can hear
the dialog and keep track of who is who most of the time, so…the directors have
added a new wrinkle to shows…jumping forward and back in time.
A typical
show today starts off with several characters who look alike whispering dialog
that you can’t hear and just as you think you can figure out what is going on
they jump ahead 15 years and when you almost get used to the plot they go back
12 years. To fully understand what is
happening 15 years ahead, it requires knowing facts from 15 years back which
they do not let you know until after time jumping several times.
Finally, if
you are really paying close attention to the time frame, the look-alike
characters with the same sounding names, and have the volume turned up extra
high, it all comes together:
“OH, so Sally was really Sara’s twin
who was married to Ed, Edith’s brother and Susie was the bastard daughter
fathered by Ernie the gardener who is Sally’s husband Ernst’s
doppelganger. Finally, it all makes
sense!”
No wonder I
prefer re-runs of “Leave it to Beaver.
Hubby controls the remote here, so I don't get to see a lot of the shows I find interesting unless I go and watch them in the bedroom which can be cumbersome at times. But when he is out of town or somewhere else in the evenings, then I'll watch, of course, what interests me.
ReplyDeleteI have found in the shows I like "Big Bang Theory", "Modern Family", "Life in Pieces" and probably more shows out there, there are usually several different scenarios going on that might or not work together at the end. It keeps things (for me) interesting and I just keep turning up the volume if I can't hear it. The air conditioner can usually block out the noise and since we live in Arizona the air conditioner is on more months than not.
betty
I don't think I've watched anything that complicated. I avoid soap operas mostly because they seem to go on for decades without much change at all, and the more modern version such as you've described probably hasn't made it out here yet. frankly, I hope it never does. We have enough rubbish on our screens already.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I hate about TV is the soundtrack volume, which is a million times louder than any dialogue, so you turn up to 70 to hear the words, then get your eardrums blasted when the "background" music starts up.
I agree with you. And don't forget how fast they talk, whisper or not. Why do they have to have all blonde or all brown hair?
ReplyDeleteOkay so while I can't agree with you completely because I have some favorite shows that I'm watching right now (none that I will mention here for fear it will be used against me somehow) but since you mentioned Leave It To Beaver I just have to comment: so you know my oldest daughter who has the brain injury (you've read my posts so I know you know a little bit about her) well, on the day of the accident my husband jumped into the back of the ambulance with her and took off, leaving me behind with two small children, with a car that was wrecked, and this was before cell phones. There were no police there. No other rescue service. Just me, the kids, and a few cars that had pulled over after we got hit. I wasn't in an area that I knew. I assumed they were taking her to a hospital but I had no idea which one. I was completely lost and stranded...on the side of the road. Oh, and it was raining. So then, some man came up to me and gently said, "Hey, umm...do you need a ride to the hospital? I can drive you." and I looked back to the car that he was gesturing towards. He was tin the car directly behind us when we got hit. He had pulled over to offer help. Anyways, because I had no other choice, I took him up on the offer. Me and my two small children got into the back of his car and he drove us to the nearest hospital (which turned out to be the one my daughter was taken to) Then he stayed in the waiting room with me and the kids for over two hours, not even talking to me but just sitting by me, until my mother came to be with me. Before he left he handed me a small piece of paper and told me to keep in touch and that he'd be praying for my daughter. I took the paper without looking at it and put it into my purse. I was in a daze and really wasn't processing much at the time, but I did say thank you to him. My daughter stayed 3 months in the hospital and one day after she got discharged, I was going through my purse and cleaning things out, and I found a piece of paper at the bottom of my purse that had the words TONY DOW written on it, with a phone number below the name. And I thought to myself, why in the world do I have Wally's phone number??? I honestly had NO idea. And then I remembered! and I was like, no way!! That was Tony Dow who gave me the ride to the hospital?? I honestly never even looked at his face at the time. I was in shock from the accident and sick with worry for my daughter. Anyways, to this day (and that was 20 years ago) the Dow family and ours have kept in contact via Christmas cards & letters. He has a beautiful, warm family. A lovely wife. He's a grandpa now. And when I was a little girl, I used to watch that show all the time, and Beaver was more my age, but I never liked him. Wally was always my favorite. I always thought Wally was the big brother that I never had that I wish I had. I was raised with just a little sister and I always wanted to be looked out after by a big brother. Well, it's it funny that many years later Wally did act like my big brother for a short time. Isn't that weird?? Okay, I know I wrote another book here but hey, it's been a long time since I commented, so I'm overdue.
ReplyDeleteWonderful story about one of my favorite actors. I use to have a crush on him. So glad he was there for you and that your daughter was OK.
DeleteI never know who's who when the appearance is so identical and I swear one day the neighbours will complain about the noise because I need the sound up high. At first I thought I was going deaf until a neighbour complained she couldn't hear what actors were saying these days. Mainly women, men I can understand.
ReplyDeleteThe name thing bothers me in books, too. Especially when it's Mary Katherine and Ann Marie type names. I find sitcoms to be so predictable and the laugh track annoying. Reality shows are so much more interesting to me, though I know most people claim to hate them.
ReplyDeleteWe are paying a lot of money for cable and there is not much worth watching any more...if it wasn't for the endless gabbling news stations and the mind numbing sports there would be no reason to have cable at all. Thank God for books and knitting and blogging.
ReplyDeleteIf I watch the main TV alone, I put the closed captioning on. Sometimes the sound track drowns out the voices. Also, commercials are much louder than the actual programming. I'm happiest watching my personal TV and PBS.
ReplyDeleteI tend to stick with Netflix, these days.. and a few recorded must-see programs so I watch very little TV while the show is actually being broadcast. When I did, what I used to notice is not so much that the shows were ultra low in volume (perhaps they were) but that the commercials BLASTED me with noise when they came on. Now I can just zip through them on the DVR. Whatever the quirks of television are, you can be sure there's a psychological thought process behind them and that they are no doubt money-driven.
ReplyDeleteLeave it to Beaver does sound much better now, I thought it was just me thinking everyone was whispering, at least "The Beav" talked in a normal voice.
ReplyDeleteHahahahahahaha. Yep. That pretty much sums it up. My favorites are the mother/daughter duos that really do look more like sisters or best friends. I like definitive characters.
ReplyDeleteHey, Beaver still holds up.
ReplyDeleteI know whatcha mean. I've got a linear kinda mind, so those shows that bebop from one time to another... or from one possible plot to another, like parallel universes... drive me nuts. Maybe that's why I read so much.
ReplyDeleteThe only shows I watch regularly now are "Jeopardy" & "The Chase" & I rely on subtitles!!
ReplyDeleteThese days when Mrs. Chatterbox's People magazine arrives in the mail I no longer recognize half of the people.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I stick to reality shows. We don't have Leave It To Beaver right now, and I'm not an Andy Griffith fan like my husband. But in the mornings, I'll get hooked on That 70s Show for several episodes.
ReplyDeleteEvery time i read about the state of TV today, i'm glad we don't have one.
ReplyDeleteUgh. All of the above, and then some. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI recently cancelled cable! I am not much of a tv show watcher at all, except a few that I watch fairly faithfully like Law & Order SVU reruns. Ha. But I know exactly what you mean about TV shows now! I'm so much more of a movie watcher.
ReplyDeleteYou definitely nailed this one!
ReplyDeleteOf course, I tend to (not) watch TV from the dining room, where I sit with my laptop, surfing the internet. Sometimes a movie doesn't make ANY SENSE AT ALL. And then my husband (who sits on the couch in the living room) tells me that's because he's switched movies three times... LOL.