I Like to Watch

Nov. 12, 2006 | You should know that I've stayed up nights worrying about you, chickens. I've had my own concerns over the past month, sure. Nothing too dramatic, of course, just the birth of my first child, a daughter, already demonstrating a sly wit, a flair for the dramatic and an interest in architecture. But such mundane developments hardly rate compared to my very crucial role here, steering you chickens toward pressing and important televised events and steering you away from the noxious fumes of broadcast entertainments that will only waste your time and make you stupid -- or even stupider, depending on where you fall on the curve now.

Yes, countless are the times I've awoken in a cold sweat in the middle of the night -- to quiet the cries of my firstborn, sure, but more importantly, to address my racing thoughts about you. I have imagined you during my absence from these pages, chickens, flipping aimlessly through the TV section of your local newspapers, or running out and purchasing a copy of TV Guide in a moment of silent desperation. I can't bear to picture my poor flock like that, clucking anxiously, your bloodshot chickeny eyes wandering to and fro across the page, trying to make sense of the concrete information presented therein! You can only be wondering: Where are the extremely biased, high-strung, rambling assessments to which I've grown accustomed? Where are the endless personal digressions and indulgent asides that keep me distracted from the fact that I'm actually reading about television, that I'm skipping right past the cover article on Guantánamo or North Korea or the results of the election, and instead greedily devouring bemused conjecture regarding the new season of "The OC"?

Don't think for a second the stakes aren't high. What if one of your intellectual chicken friends were to stop by and spot that TV Guide on your coffee table, right next to a crumpled New York Times Style section, on top of that untouched front-page article on child labor abuses in Ghana?

And what if, over the course of the past month, you've actually become attached to such printed material, offering as it does actual programming information and balanced, straightforward critiques? Perhaps by now you're even willing to overlook the various authors' obvious shortcomings, as evidenced by her enthusiasm for some of Oxygen's lighter offerings, or by his inability to miss a single episode from the "CSI" franchise including "CSI: Miami." Perhaps it doesn't even bother you, the idea of being led through the hinterlands of television by someone who doesn't remotely attempt to hide his willingness to spend one hour each week in the company of David Caruso, someone who doesn't even cringe ever-so-slightly at the umpteenth sepia-toned swamp scene that begins with a close-up of a prettily manicured severed hand and ends with Caruso, blinking into some middle distance while growling a miserably macho line of dialogue, inevitably speculating on the unmatched brutality and mercilessness of the sort of human being that must be responsible for such a brutal and merciless killing.

Don't lose your sense of what's important now, chickens, at this 11th hour, when a sea of useless notions and incoherent evaluations and highly prejudicial analyses are once again available to you! Don't forget that I know you, my fowl friends. I know that you care more about TV shows that you don't even watch than you care about the latest car bombing in Baghdad or the latest unreasonable bit of legislation introduced in Congress, and I love you just the same! I love you unconditionally, regardless of how hopelessly shallow you are, and I always will. Becoming a mother made it possible for me to love you that much. Do you think that guy with the "CSI" jones can love you like that? Unless he also recently bore a child, I'm guessing that he's incapable of such a depth of compassion and love.

So take a deep breath and silence those noisy thoughts scurrying through your tiny pea-brains, chickens. I'm back and more unfocused and long-winded than ever!

Absence of malice

And thanks to the fact that I'm a mother now, a state which only those of you who've sat tirelessly on eggs for several days can possibly begin to comprehend, I also have a whole new understanding of the meaning of family, and, more importantly, the meaning of shows about families -- namely, I hate them more than ever.

Now, HBO's "Six Feet Under" was a show about family, sure, but the family in that show was portrayed realistically. They spent their time barely tolerating each other's existences, silently judging each other, openly criticizing each other's choices and only occasionally expressing love for each other, mostly by talking nonsensically about the spaghetti being perfectly cooked. Because the writers of that show knew that in real families, comments like "I like those shoes. Are those new?" or "Can I read that book when you're done with it?" are taken by other family members to mean "I love you" -- which, thankfully, makes the unsavory task of actually saying the words "I love you" completely unnecessary.

Next page: The unbelievable Walker clan