I have a confession. I. . . love. . . television.
When people tell me that they enjoy movies, but they don’t watch television, I generally assume one or more of these things to be true:
1. They don’t have a DVR (poor backwards bastards)
2. They haven’t sampled any of the good shows.
3. They are lying.
I watch movies too, mostly on DVDs. Of the kid-oriented movies that I’ve seen in the past year, I’d say I enjoyed 90% of them. When you make a movie without sex and violence and car chases and infidelity, it turns out that you have to use actual creativity. Kid movies are great.
I enjoy R-rated movies only about 10% of the time. The other 90% are filled with movie cliché revenge violence, unnecessary sex, and themes that make me feel bad. But television, on the other hand, has a zillion channels and just enough censorship to make the creators act creatively. If you can’t find several shows on TV that you love, you aren’t even trying.
For example, the TV show “24” with Kiefer Sutherland is more entertaining than just about any movie I’ve seen in the past five years, and it lasts 24 hours! The comedy “My Name is Earl” is funnier than all but maybe three movies that came out this year. So that’s about 8 hours of funny movies all year compared to more than ten hours of Earl this season. TV wins again.
Here’s my list of TV favorites, in case anyone cares.
24
House
Entourage
Boston Legal
My Name is Earl
King of Queens
The Office
Battlestar Gallactica
American Idol (pure cheesy brilliance)
So You Think You Can Dance?
The OC (guilty pleasure)
Tennis tournaments
Bullsh*t with Penn and Teller
Real Time with Bill Maher