Dobrindts Dot Com

Here are the shows that I DVR each week and watch when I have time.

Surface

Kind of like Lost. There is something in the ocean that is big, hungry and new to mankind. People do stupid things to try to catch it, or at least prove its there. The government is covering it up for some reason. One of the main characters has a terrible fake southern accent which kind of bugs me, but the main female character is not overwhelming us with beauty which definitely makes it appear, at least on the “surface”, to be more real. It has good and evil and the unknown and mystery and suspense and some cool outdoor scenes. The graphics can be cool but I have to admit that the baby monster that the geeky boy played with looked totally bogus. And when they tried to use an action figure for the baby monster it just looked like a plastic toy that I would by at the aquarium.

I like this show because it has to do with water. I would definitely take Aqua Man over Superman or the Wonder Twins any day and I have always been fascinated by what is below the surface. When I am out on a boat where you can’t see past a couple of feet down, I love jumping in because of the rush you get with not knowing what is swimming around your feet. It’s fascinating.

It’s a pretty good show and definitely has gratuitous use of scantily clad women to add an element to it. All shows do that now so I am not offended. In fact, I like it, I’ll be honest.

I love the house that the geeky kid lives in. I want to live there. But what is with that kid’s middle aged mom having fake boobs? It’s kind of strange.

I do like that they have not made both lead characters single with an inevitable romance in the works. If they hook up the show will lose a ton of viewers because one is married and in real life his wife would have booted him already for running around with a hot 26 year old college student. And I really can’t get over that fake accent the guy has. It’s terrible. And while I like to believe that the government has the ability to cover up secret things and kill people at will and stuff, I doubt it actually happens. But you never know and it makes for good TV.

I am kind of waiting for the story line where they blame Bush for the sea creatures.

I can see it jumping the ...

I can see it jumping the shark soon though. I can’t imagine it getting much better before it totally becomes unrealistic. There is a fundamental problem with shows like this. Twin Peaks had it, I heard Desperate Housewives has it, Lost will get it. These are not themes that are sustainable. They are shows that have a mystery and each episode is leading up to finding out about the mystery. After some fact is revealed or the mystery is solved, the show dies a slow death. Themes around hospitals, cops, lawyers and courts, these things can introduce new story lines each week and keep up the freshness. But I see a time soon with Surface when we find out what the big deal is, then the show gets dumb.

The Office

This is a tough one for the general public to like. It’s kind of painful to watch because of how over the top the main character is. The BBC version of this show is fantastic. But British humor can get away with things that are just misunderstood here in the States. The first season of The Office was not great. This second season is actually pretty funny. The show is about a sales office of an office supply company and the different people who work there. It is set up to be a mockumentary so the characters look like they are being filmed by a reality TV crew. This technique allows the writers, and actors, to talk directly into the TV when they have a thought and enables the show to be an easier success. Think about it. They could have just called it The Office and pretended it was a real office. But by making it a documentary style show, they can have the characters explain more by talking directly into the camera, which helps explain the character’s thoughts.

Either way, I love this show. It is one of the funniest shows on TV. I work in an office so I get some of the smaller pieces of humor, but most people would get the humor either way. The only thing I have a hard time with is that it is too over the top sometimes. But the individual characters are fantastic. At least some of them.

The other thing that makes me like the show is that my wife’s doctor has a daughter who graduated from Dartmouth a few years ago and she is a writer for the show. She also appears in most episodes as an employee of the office. She wrote the Dundy Awards episode.

This show will end only when it implodes. It is set up for fresh story lines each week but I have a bad feeling that office storylines will only go so far. Once it starts moving out of the office, like into each characters personal lives, it will jump the shark. I see a couple of more years.

Michael Scott, played by Steve Carell, is great.

My Name is Earl

I thought I would hate this show. On quick glance it looked like something I would totally hate. Redneck humor. I hate it. That idiot that had the tag line “you know you’re a redneck when…” bothered the crap out of me. But I actually really like the show. And the theme behind the show is brilliant. A jerk redneck who has done people wrong wins 100K in a scratch off ticket. He immediately gets hit by a car and losses the ticket. He realizes he got hit because of bad karma, which he realizes was caused by doing bad things to people for so many years. So he makes a list of bad things he has done and goes through each one to make it right, thus bringing him good karma. His ticket magically comes back and now we have a new project for him each week.

Two reasons why this show works.

1 – Great theme. People inherently like watching shows where something good happens. People just like it. It makes them feel good. People go to bed feeling better after a show ends on a nice note. Each week Earl does something nice for someone to make up for doing something bad. Great concept. Brilliant.

2 – Earl. Jason Lee has some quality about him that is endearing. He is likeable and his acting style is unique. It’s hard to explain but he is fun to watch.

I like the Spanish housekeeper and Earl’s ex wife, but I hate, HATE his brother. I don’t like the actor. His name is Ethan Suplee. He played a gothic college student in the Butterfly Effect (a great movie), was in Mallrates (also with Jason Lee) as well as a number of other movies and TV shows. I just don’t like him. I think they could have got a much better actor to play someone who is slow and dimwitted but genuine. Every time the guy opens his mouth it bugs me.

But overall I see this show going a long way.

60 Minutes/Dateline/News Magazines

Not much to be said here. I am kind of a news junkie. I rarely watch all the segments but I tape them in case there is something really great that I want to watch. Or if there is a story that relates specifically to me. But with TiVO it is really easy to record these and delete if nothing appeals to me.

Lost

This show is old news. Everyone knows the story. Airplane crashes on a remote island and strange things happen. Huge cast of characters and interesting story lines. I like stories about plane crashes and deserted islands, so this was a natural for me.

But it is starting to annoy me. First, the episodes move much to slow. I know the show is leading up to a conclusion, and they want to get as much mileage out of it as possible, but each week only reveals slightly more than the previous week. They need to get going.

Second, it bugs me that the fat guy never losses weight. Have you ever seen Survivor. After like 2 weeks those people are stick thin. The fat dude is still huge.

But I like the characters and I love how they slowly reveal clips of the character’s previous lives. It helps build the tension and explains the history.

I like this show but see it jumping the shark soon. It is just not structured for long term success.

Survivor

This show has left the station for a lot of people but I still love it. The contestants are anything but special, the challenges are just rehashed, and Jeff Probst is still kind of hokey, but the show has not lost its appeal to me. For some reason I like to watch narcissistic media whores suffer with no food or water in the sweltering heat and incessant bugs flying around, only to back stab each other and get voted off with their tales between their legs. But hey, I get my pleasures from the simple things.

The Apprentice

I don’t know why I watch this show. There is very little that is good about it. And nothing resembles the real world. And if the contestants were half of successful as they claim to be, then working for old Trump at 100K a year would be a step down. The only reason, and let’s not kid ourselves, for the people to be on that show is to get media attention and launch their hope of a television career. Nothing else. Because while Trump might be successful, he is by no means a genius. If I wanted to be an apprentice to a business success story, I would try to work for the CEO of GE, Burger King, Jet Blue or some other major international Fortune 50 company. Not a guy who got his start with his father’s money and your chances of making it big without a last name of ‘Trump’ are miniscule. And when are they going to come out with an Apprentice for a trade, craft or specialty group. I would love to see a bunch of people try to be an apprentice to Bill Parcells or Tom Hanks or some music industry executive. Or an apprentice to a major clothing designer or famous artist or something else that requires passion and skill and not just the ability to sell ice cream at some television sponsor’s Manhattan store.

But I keep watching it every week and do a play by play commentary that probably drives my wife nuts. I would have been a killer writer for Mystery Science Theater. The one thing I do like about the show, kind of like watching a drunk friend hit on a hot chick, is that I get to see how to fail miserably at very simple tasks. I look at what these people do when they have to set up a Blockbuster display or create a stupid commercial and I wonder if they went to high school, let alone business school. And there are huge gaps in the show timeline. Like how do they go from designing a cardboard display for Star Wars to having someone build the actual thing?

This show will go on as long as Trump makes people believe he is a true business genius and idiots like me record every episode.

Saturday Night Live

The last time SNL was really good I fit into a 28 inch pants size. It is awful. It’s not only NOT funny, it’s like they are writing episodes that poke fun at how unfunny it is. It would be like someone asking me to run a day care. I could do it but it wouldn’t be pretty. Yet I still tape every single episode. The good thing is that my DVR has a 30 second skip so that when a skit is bad I just go through it quickly. The bad thing is I find myself going through each episode of SNL in about 20 minutes.

I shouldn’t be so hard on the show. The cast members are kind of weak, but the show is not as bad as I make it out to be. It used to be that 3 out of every 4 skits were good, and now it is probably 3 out of every 4 are bad. But that leaves 1 out of every 4 as good. And the Weekend Update is always good. Plus the musical guests are usually very good.

I’ll continue to tape it and watch it and hopefully they will get rid of that cast member who does the Falconer and Zell Miller and the soft talking political candidate. He is terrible. Ugh. But Tina Fay is great.

Rome

This show is crazy. It has everything that is bad in this world. The cool thing is that since it takes place so long ago, no one can question its authenticity or accuracy. Who knows what took place back in those day? All we know is that the Romans were crazy from the mercury in all the wine they drank and anything goes. And this show highlights that. Rampant sex with anything that breathes. Drinking. Killing. Treachery. Fighting. Animals. Slaves. You name it and the show has it. But in the middle of all this stuff are some cool story lines and great characters and visually appealing set designs and huge scenes with hundreds of extras. It’s impressive.

Other than the harshness of the show, I have very little bad to say about it. I have no idea how historically accurate it is but Patti, who reads about history and knows much more than I do, says that so far it has been pretty accurate. I know Ceaser will get killed eventually by Brutus, I did read Shakespeare in high school, but other than that I am in the dark. For example, I had no idea Julius Ceaser did the hokey pokey with Cleopatra. Or that Egypt was a vessel of Rome back then. It’s sad that I am getting my history lessons from a cable mini series.

I like this show. I like the vice of watching it and the shock of things that happen. I like the actors and the story lines and how they not only show how royalty lived back then with slaves to do whatever they wanted but it also shows how the common man lived. I know it cost HBO 100 mil to make and I just hope they bring it back for a second season.

Ultimate Fighting Challenge

I am ashamed to admit I watch this. This is redneck TV through and through. It is a reality TV show about a house full of young guys who are fighters and they are competing for a 6 figure contract in a fighting organization called the Ultimate Fighting Championship. They are divided into two teams and they compete in two weight classes. They end up doing useless challenges that mean nothing and then the show focuses on their training, their lives in the house, and finally their fights. The thing about the show is that what they do is so foreign to me. They are like gladiators. They are kind of friends in the house, train together, eat together, and then get in a ring and try to beat the crap out of each other. There are some rules like no eye poking and not crotch shots, but everything else is open game. The opponent losses by tapping out, getting knocked out, having the ref call it, or going three rounds and having three judges decide. It is violent, stressful to watch and I can’t turn it off. I am the farthest thing from a street fighter and these guys are the farthest thing from a management consultant. But part of me wishes I had taken boxing when I was younger because I am kind of impressed by basic boxing technique. This show takes it to the next level but its not just street fighting, all of the guys have had some level of technical fight training.

I am pretty sure they will have a third season and I will probably watch that too. I just won’t tell anyone. I mentioned it to one guy I know and he gave me a holier than though attitude about it. Oh well, to each his own.

Others

I completely stopped watching ER but will leave it on if I happen to come across it. I will watch sporting events but that is not a scheduled show. Of course I watch the news but no need to comment on that. I watch the Today show when I am getting ready in the morning, and that is entertaining in a moronic kind of way, but I don’t record it so it didn’t make my list. Patti watches some of the same shows as well as her own. She tried to get me to watch some of hers but I am pretty picky about which shows I watch. I also flick around the channels, called channel surfing, and will stop on anything that looks good. PBS has great shows called American Experience that I’ll watch and I usually find myself slowing down around the home improvement shows.

Finally, I love having a DVR/TiVo type device. It is called time shifting and I no longer am on a network’s schedule. Even if I am home when a show starts, I’ll find something else to watch until the show is at least halfway through just to be able to skip through the commercials.

After the kids are in bed I like to read and I play on the computer all the time, but there is nothing like watching TV to give you mindless entertainment that has no strings attached relaxation. People might rip too much TV watching, but I am an adult and have already been corrupted by violence and nudity. I like the educational aspect of the news and the entertainment aspect of the shows. Who cares if it’s stupid.