Friday, August 28, 2009

TV with minimal cable

Cable is not in my budget, which means I'm not watching Mad Men or Adult Swim, two of my favorite things about having cable. (I know I can watch some of this stuff on the Internet, but I really, really, really don't want to spend MORE time in front of the damn computer.) Missing my stories makes me sad, but I managed to pick up a few new habits on regular TV anyway:

Da Vinci's Inquest

This Canadian show from a few years back is in syndication in the US. I watch it (okay, I tape it) on channel 5 at 1:35 AM on Sundays, just before the overhauled Star Trek episodes. It's a crime drama loosely based on a real coroner in Vancouver. It's very talky, with a lot of political intrigue. I'm not sure why I like it so much. It might be Da Vinci's dry sense of humor. I know it's not his cheap haircuts.

I started watching this a year or two ago, but it was on Sunday nights and I couldn't keep up with it or tape it because the schedule was perturbed by football or something (or maybe I just wasn't able to keep track). Hopefully that won't be a problem any more.

Mental

Over the years, I've wondered why TV series about mental health facilities never do well. I liked Wonderland with Michelle Forbes (who at the time was famous mainly for a brief stint as a Maqui on ST:TNG), but it got canceled after three episodes, and then I spent the next nine years hoping something like it would show up again.

Then Mental came along, and I was quickly disillusioned. It sucked like nothing has ever sucked before. I don't even want to waste my time telling you all the different ways it sucks; it's just thoroughly horrible. Imagine if Dr. House were a psychiatrist, and used various little schemes to trick his patients into getting well. Okay, well, sometimes Dr. House resorts to dirty tricks, but the Dr. House's tricks usually convince the patient to accept the treatment. They don't constitute the treatment! Dr. What's-his-name's tricks actually heal the patients. Like one time he shows the the patient some spiral twirly wheel gadget to hypnotize him, and then the guy's all better. Later, Dr. Mental admits to someone else that he didn't really hypnotize the patient with the twirly spiral wheel.

Great! What a wonderfully inaccurate and misleading of a profession that's already horribly misunderstood. Did the Levines do any research into mental health care or mental illness at all?

Another big difference is that, because of his unethical hijinks, Dr. House is generally portrayed and viewed as a troubled jerk who is tolerated (barely) by most people only because of his tremendous diagnostic skills. Dr. Mental is adored by most of his colleagues, and it's supposed to be charming and cute that he treats his patients like pathetic gullible morons with his cheezy theatrics.

It makes me wonder if the Levines are Scientologists, but my Google search says probably not. I'll continue to be curious, though.

These petty criticisms are just scratching the surface. Hate it, hate it, hate it, and I really hope to hear soon that it wasn't picked up for a second season.

So why did I keep watching it? At first I was hoping that it would get better, and then when I realized there was no hope I continued to watch because it was still programmed on my machine and I was fascinated by just how bad it was.

If it does get picked up for a second season, I really hope that it's on at the same time as something I actually like so that I won't be tempted to stare at this train wreck again.

The Goode Family

This was Mike Judge's new effort with ABC after the cancellation of King of the Hill. The Goodes were a lot like the Hills, but sort of opposite... only not really... and it's already canceled. Maybe that's because ABC continues not to know how to position an animated show, or maybe it's because some of the people who were willing to laugh at Texans took it personally when the same kind of humor was pointed at them. I didn't find it mean-spirited at all - not more than KotH, anyway - but it seems that many people really were uncomfortable with it.

I don't know why ABC picked it up in the first place. It doesn't really fit in their lineup. But it was good to hear the voices of Julia Sweeney and Brian Doyle Murray again, even if only for a short time.

Penny Dreadful's Shilling Shockers

Okay, so I accidentally lied. I do have a little bit of cable. I have basic (not to be confused with standard) cable, because antenna reception here is very bad, like, nil thanks to wind and ocean. New Bedford was probably the first city in MA to abandon roof antennas as soon as an alternative became available; our roofs take enough abuse without mounting big things on them.

So with cable, I get most of the Boston and Providence channels, plus several public access/government channels and all the shopping channels. I also get a few more unscrambled cable channels, mostly HD plus Univision and Telemundo, thanks to the QAM tuner in my digital TV. Sadly, however, that's of limited usefulness since it's only on this one TV and I don't have any way to tape the shows or watch them in a different room (I'd need a QAM tuner on my DVD-RAM machine or VCR to do that). I watch my telenovela "live," or I don't watch it at all, because life's too short to spend the whole damn day on YouTube.

But I digress. I'd love to blather at length about the unavailability of standalone, non-USB QAM tuners that I could hook up to a VCR (tell me if you know something I don't), but this is not the time.

New Bedford cable access channel 95 is the home of Penny Dreadful's Shilling Shockers, a local horror host show that can also be seen nationwide thanks to some horror host network. I started watching Penny infrequently a few years ago, but didn't make it a regular thing until I lost the rest of my cable channels and could no longer get my Friday Night Fix on the Cartoon Network.

After Penny's show, we're usually treated to some other horror host's show. Sadly, because most of these horror host shows deal in movies that are in the public domain, you end up seeing the likes of Dementia 13 a lot, or worse (like The Brain That Wouldn't Die). So it's very important that the horror host not suck.

There's one who just stands around in a cape and recaps the scene that you just saw, mostly to drool about how hot the woman in it was. There's another who interrupts scenes to make insipid wisecracks. (Being surrounded by flames does not make him or his skanks look any hotter.) There's also a non-horror one with an ensemble cast that reminds me of Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job.

Only The Late Dr. Lady Show comes close to Penny Dreadful, in my opinion. Penny does field trips to local places, like the Lizzie Borden House and the former Danvers State Hospital, and she also interviews local artists and showcases their work. She did one episode in Portuguese. Neat! New Bedford is very, very lucky to have her.

On that obsequious note, I leave the computer to go back to my TV, where an old Penny Dreadful Shilling Shocker is already in progress. (New eps in September. I can't wait!)

4 comments:

  1. Sadly, I think we'll soon be joining you on the minimal cable front. After making it to 42 without ever having paid a dime to watch TV the govt. and television industry have managed to make it next to impossible to enjoy "free' TV. Digital TV is wonderfull as long as it's not windy, or raining or an airplane isn't flying near the house. So next month we'll break down and spend $13 a month to get the same service I get now for free but hopefully without having to constantly play with an antenna rotor.

    I had hoped I could watch what I couldn't catch on TV on the intern et by now but at least some shows are moving away from free internet reruns.

    On the QAM tuner front would a digital convertor box work? We've got an extra if it would.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sadly no, a digital converter box works strictly for over-the-air signals. QAM tuners are strictly for non-scrambled digital cable signals.

    You can get a VCR or other recording device with a QAM tuner, but the few choices are very expensive. Expensive enough to drive you back to cable.

    It's hard to find information (lots of people asking the same questions, not so many giving answers) about standalone QAM tuners. There must be some kind of, er, tension between the media companies and electronics manufacturers/vendors.

    The USB QAM tuners are coming from lesser-known names in the electronics industry. They are easy to find and inexpensive, but you need a damn good PC to get any use out of them. (I tried, and I DO have a damn good PC IMO, but it's still not good enough. Lots of memory and disk space issues.)

    To complicate matters, Comcast claims that in order to get Univision in a cable package, Digital Economy (which they don't talk about much) wouldn't be enough, I'd have to pay even more. It's ridiculous. It's a regular TV broadcast network, for crying out loud. Comcast makes it readily available in most neighboring communities. I think its unavailability here has something to do with a one-sided ethnic rivalry in New Bedford.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I once tried to write a piece called 'Penny Worth', a combination of a penny dreadful novel and a Mary Worth comic ;) I got distracted and never opened the file again. Story of my life ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Penny Worth" sounds like a brilliant title, even if the work is never finished.

    ReplyDelete

Since this blog is pretty close to being dead, I am moderating all comments.