Well, folks, I'm happy to say that you're here for the birth of something new. Unlike a human birth, though, there's no viscous discharge or long and grueling lawsuits over paternity. No, unlike a human birth, this is something to be celebrated! That's right, you're here for the joyous birth of a new feature here at TV Squad: TV 101.
Just what is TV 101? Well, you're going to have to follow me over the jump to find out...
Before coming here to TV Squad and long before I was a full-time professional comedian, my day job was that of a high school teacher. So, when the lead bloggers and I started talking about a column, one of the names we threw out there was TV 101, in keeping with the spirit of my old job. (The other names we talked about: "Notes from the Greenroom" because I'm a comic and "Black Atcha" because my last name is Black and I have a love of truly ridiculous puns).
What I'm going to try to do here is write a humorous piece about television once or twice a week that will follow the format of a lesson. Don't get worried, though, I'm not going to go overboard with it. I don't want you to think that this is going to be like Aint It Cool News was in 1998. There won't be four thousand words about me waking up and preparing my "lesson" for the "class". The format is going to be very loose. And when I say "very loose" I mean I'm going to be as serious about it as the current administration is about the environment. There will be a little song and dance to keep up appearances and then it'll be business as usual. (And before you get all political on me regarding that last joke, keep in mind that I didn't say which administration I was referring to. I'm pretty sure that with the track record of both the Democrats and the Republicans, that joke will be fresh as long as there are people around to access the Internet -- which if the current administration has its way will probably be no more than three or four months, tops. See, I did it again!)
A few warnings before we begin:
1) All of these pieces will have a point, but my first goal is going to be to try and make you laugh. Why? Because mommy didn't love enough. It was either try to fill the void with the hollow laughter of strangers or start an emo band. I have no musical talent and a low tolerance for tight pants so... here we are.
2) These posts are going to be long. I'm married so every second I spend locked in my office banging out blogs for you people is another second I don't have to help with housework or listen to another one of my wife's neverending stories. Like a lot of men, I love my wife very much, I just need to hide from her as much as I possibly can.
3) I'm going to be extremely neurotic concerning your opinions about TV 101 blogs. When I spit out a Studio 60 review or a "The Five" list or whatever, I can take solace in the fact that your criticism is wrapped up in your feelings about the show rather than your feelings about me. TV 101, though, is pretty much a reflection of whatever is in my brain, so I'm predicting a negative comment (or thirty) will probably affect me a lot more than in my other posts. Even as I type this, I worry that I'm inviting more criticism for bringing attention to it. If you're wondering what the source of all this neurosis is, please direct your attention to point 1.
Okay, now that we're all clear on what this is and who I am, let's take a look at our first subject! We're gonna learn some new vocabulary. The Real Time View.
I'm not a religious man, but sometimes you look around at all the beauty in this world and you just can't help but see the eyes of God staring back. Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about mundane things like the smile of a newborn or the love of a soulmate. I'm talking about important things. I'm talking about TiVo.
If you haven't joined the "tivolution" (and do I feel like a tool for using that word? Yes. Yes I do.) I'm not going to waste any space trying to explain it to you. As The Lovin' Spoonful once said, "I [could] tell you about the magic and it'll free your soul/But It's like trying to tell a stranger about Rock and Roll." Go out and get one already.
Those of us that have been converted know what a life-changing device it is. All at once, you're freed from the tyranny of the network scheduling executives. Remember when you saw the videos of all those German teenagers cheering as they brought down the Berlin Wall? Well, buying a TiVo feels exactly like that.
Even better than watching the shows that you want to watch when you want to watch them is the ability to skip commercials. The "boop...boop...boop" followed by the ads whizzing by feels magical. Really, I'm pretty sure that when that omnipotent kid from the Twlight Zone movie wasn't busy tormenting his family, he was using his powers to skip commercials. Well, that power is no longer the stuff of second-rate anthology movies. It's in the hands of the average consumer!
I'm so used to being able to skip commercials, I always forget that I can't do it with shows that are airing in real time. There's nothing more disappointing than watching something and not realizing it's live. When you press the fast-forward button, you hear an unharmonious "thump" and then a little part of you dies. It's not just me, either, this is something I've seen with my wife too. She'll press it a few times as if Tivo was just joking around the first time.
Either way, nothing sucks more than having to watch something with commercials when you're so used to living without them. TiVo actually makes it so you don't want to watch stuff live anymore. A lot of times a show will come on that both my wife and I want to watch and we'll pause it, go make popcorn (or run upstairs to the office to "blog" or whatever the hell it is I do up here), then come back to the show when enough buffer has built up that we can watch the whole show without being burdened by ads.
All this has got me to thinking that the best compliment a TiVo owner can give a show is to give it The Real Time View. Quickly defined, The Real Time View is when you love a show so much that you're willing to sit through commercials (like a commoner) because you can't even wait ten minutes to build up a TiVo buffer.
For me, the shows that get the Real Time View are: Lost and sports. That's it. Everything else can wait.
It's a short list, but both of them have, I think, essential qualities that make them Real Time View worthy. In the case of Lost, it's an addictive serialized show that is harder to shake than heroin (at least for me. For those of you that have made the claim that the show has lost something in the last season and a half, well, you might have a point. But ask any heroin user, once you're addicted, even bad heroin is good heroin. Until, of course, you die. Maybe this was a bad example...)
I'd guess that serialized shows make up a good portion of your own Real Time Views. Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, even Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy fit the bill. When a show is all about "what happens next", you really can't wait to find out "what happens next."
As for sports, they're a communal activity and the only way you can be a part of that community is to give it the Real Time View. Besides, it's hard not to feel like a lame sitcom character telling people all day not to ruin the end of the big game for you. You might as well handcuff yourself to your worst enemy in a botched magic trick or get two dates for the same dance.
DVRs are going to become ubiquitous pretty soon (what does ubiquitous mean? It means every man, woman, and child on the planet will be able to freeze frame the next time an aging super-star pops her nipple out, that's what it means) and when you have a whole hard drive of fast-forwardable video waiting for you, it's going to take a special show to get you to actually sit through commercials. Before the network system completely breaks down and we're left with whatever Internet scheme replaces it (we're just at the beginning of a bold new world in which the networks are going to find all sorts of futuristic ways to suck money from our pockets), we're going to see the Real Time View shows held up as the gold standards. Because How I Met Your Mother is a good show, but I've never seen one of the commercials they run with it. Those stupid commercials with Peyton Manning or John Mellencamp they ran during football games this season? I've seen those about forty million times. Eyeballs on a commercial is a valuable and increasingly rare thing.
So I put it to you guys: what shows do you give the Real Time View to?
(Oh, and before I go, here's a special teaser for next week's column -- NEXT WEEK: The House dilemma).
The TV Squad Podcast: Vik Sahay of Chuck, Oprah talk, brutal timeslots, and more!
TV Squad Ten: Top Ten ESPN shows from worst to first
Andy Richter: The TV Squad Interview
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
2-21-2007 @ 10:49AM
Beezus said...
My husband and I have the Real Time View down pat. It's all about Heroes and Grey's. Don't get me wrong: I love me some House, GG, and HIMYM, but it's just not worth it. I can "do homework" and come back in the 15 minutes it took me to pretend to do that, and I can zoom right through those annoying Aerie girls or whatever they show on the "New CW". But Grey's and Heroes - they have me. They don't even need to hock OrthoEvra and the Nissan Versa, respectively. Go ahead and play the commercials - I'll watch.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 10:51AM
Elf said...
Damn. Here I thought we were going to get 4,000 words about this show: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094561/
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 11:12AM
J.M. said...
House, and maybe Scrubs. Other than that, its skip city for the rest.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:11PM
Jim said...
Okay, this is silly but I have to put it out there: my word for the TiVo buffer you've described. It's "monkey."
Why? Because the "boop-boop-boop" of the fast-forward always sounded to me like the opening notes of "Pop Goes the Weasel." Which stars, in the role of weasel-chaser, a monkey. It didn't take long for my old roomate and me to start talking like this:
[when an ad came on] "Do we have any monkey so we can skip this?"
[when a favorite show was about to start] "Wanna turn on West Wing?" "Nah, let's wait ten minutes so we'll have some monkey."
This term has actually made the jump to my new household (wife and child), where my wife uses it even though our current DVR is a non-TiVo brand forced on us by the cable company. And she never had a TiVo.
So, like TiVo itself, it seems odd until you start using it. But almost right away, it feels completely normal. Join me! If three people do it, as Arlo Guthrie sang, they'll think it's a movement. Start calling your TiVo buffer "monkey" -- and maybe you'll help me leave a stamp on this planet after all.
OK, back to normal, and probably to being embarrassed that I actually wrote this down.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 11:10AM
erroneous_nick said...
I've been recording shows via one means or another for so long that I no longer give any show the "Real Time View®" treatment. I think it really started after we had kids more than having the ability to record, and subsequently skip commercials. When you have kids you find out that they have an almost magical ability to walk in and make noise or stand in front of the TV right when something absolutely critical to the plot happens. They also have a perfect track record for showing up right when the gory scene/gratuitous nudity/rant of profanity/ is on the screen.
Being both a complete TV junkie and someone who tries to be a good parent, I would mute/turn off the TV and deal with whatever emergency brought my beloved poop-factories-on-feet before me. While that provided a great sense of satisfaction, I would miss some of my, as Jay might put it, video heroin. So, to solve both problems I made a pledge to never again watch live TV if it could be helped, and since I don't watch sports it was pretty easy to implement. To be honest, back in the days of VCR-only recording, it was often a feat to juggle the 5 VCRs I had and organize the huge stack of blank tapes, but being a good junkie I managed pretty well.
It's so much easier to record and organize shows today and even though I'm completely hooked on LOST, BSG, Heroes and a few others, I manage to wait. So no "Real Time View®" in my house.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 11:12AM
JJ Hawkins said...
I suffer the 15 minutes it takes to build up a buffer (usually by beginning to watch some show that's already waiting on TiVo Central), because I am so eager to see what happens next, I'd rather 30-second-skip the commercials and get right back in then endure the 3 minute buzzkill.
Good column.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 11:25AM
jon said...
sorry... no show is worth a real time view. i've had two networkable ReplayTV's (remember those?) for over 5 years and likely have reclaimed at least 2000 hours of my life that would've otherwise been wasted on commercials.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 11:32AM
Blackgem said...
I have to say there are quite a few shows for me that fit into real time viewing: Doctor Who, Robin Hood, Spooks (sorry, MI-5), Top Gear, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Torchwood... there are others. Of course from the list you may have guessed I'm a UK viewer, and they're all BBC shows. Real time viewing is that much easier when there are no ads in there to begin with.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 11:25AM
Mona said...
I read an interesting interview with Ed Bernero (Exec Producer of Third Watch and Criminal Minds) where he talks about how TV is really not meant to be watched in the format that writers are forced to write into. It's why shows on HBO work much better - they don't have to write to a commercial break. It's why shows can become formulatic. "Oh, cliffhanger... must be a commercial break...".
That being said - I vastly prefer to watch my shows without commercial whenever possible. However - if I am home for certain shows, I NEED to watch them real time -- Bones and Greys Anatomy come to mind.
Wouldn't it be interesting, though, if TV shows were able to sell entire blocks of shows - one advertiser per show - so that we didn't have to sit through commercials?
Reply
2-22-2007 @ 9:56AM
ggm said...
I watch 24 in real time and record Heroes for later. If I ever fix my other HDTV card, then I can time shift both.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 11:35AM
Chris W said...
Great column Jay. I like the premise; it humanizes the writer. I, for one, thought you were a gazelle and I learned something today.
Lost is definitely appointment television for me. They could put it on at HBO (which I can't afford) at 3 AM on a work night (I get up at 5), and I would pull all nighters just to get my fix. Not unlike crack cocaine. I used to be that way with 24, but it's lost its luster with me and I make a date with Heroes instead. There's something about these shows that I just have to watch in real time. It's like there's a cosmic enforcer that will either a) spoil the plot for me, b) make the story suck, or c) strike me dead if I don't watch live.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 11:36AM
Tucker said...
I wind up watching a lot of shows in "Real Time View" just because I do a lot of chatting online with friends across the country who are also watching. Most of them are still in the dark ages, and it'd also be kind of difficult to synch-up for the various differences in commercial fast-forwarding. Mostly I use the DVR as a back up or for simultaneously recording shows, but that doesn't mean I don't long for the days when I'll be able to skip all the ads.
Plus, a lot of times I'm just kind of already in "TV mode" and don't really have much else going on - so it winds up being sheer laziness that keeps me sitting there. I do love my DVR though, don't know how I ever lived without it.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:09PM
Akbar Fazil said...
Elf, I was right there with you. I thought we were getting a super cool no one actually watched this show retrosquad.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:21PM
TiVo Tyranny said...
You don't talk about the dark side of TiVo, how TiVo watchers still don't get to watch their shows uninterrupted because a spouse wants to talk about something - TV's paused, after all!
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:18PM
gt said...
about the only thing i prefer, though it is hard to always do, live viewing is sports. mainly b/c i'll have friends or family call me if a big play happens and as soon as i see my phone ring during a game and i'm behind live, i expect the worst. i also hate accidentally hitting live, and with dual tuner, switching to another game and going back to my game will often go back to my game live
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:25PM
noah said...
when will you say something humorous?
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:37PM
Derek said...
Live TV? What's that? I know how you feel about certain shows needing to be live, but you don't have to go so live that they're actually live. When your Lost starts, hit pause, go make a sandwich, have a cup of coffee. Take the trash out. Come back after 10 minutes and start your "NORMAL" (i.e. TiVo recorded) viewing. By the time you get to the end of the hour you'll have caught up anyway, just in case some saddo calls you up to talk about the show. Reclaim your ad-viewing time, use TiVo like it should be used ;-)
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:43PM
Liz Finn-Arnold said...
I've only had my DVR since Christmas, and I can't imagine why anyone watches commercials -- EVER. I still watch some shows real-time live, but find myself getting antsy during commercial breaks. I keep reminding myself that I can come into a show 15 minutes late and catch up through the beautiful magic of fast-forwarding.
Because I review American Idol here at TV Squad, I don't get to see Lost live anymore. But that's okay. Actually, I only became a Lost fan after watching Season One non-stop on DVD, so I prefer watching it without commercials, and with the ability to pause and rewind. I just have to avoid the TV Squad Reviewcap and comments until I've caught up.
The shows I generally catch live: Heroes, Grey's Anatomy, Men in Trees, Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters, and of course, American Idol.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:41PM
mike said...
There's a few shows I like to watch live, mostly because they're HD, and I don't have an HD DVR yet, so I watch live Lost, Heroes, Must See TV (though it bums me that Scrubs is not HD), and Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters. I still record those as backup though, ya know, in case I get a phone call or miss something.
Reply
2-21-2007 @ 12:42PM
jDub said...
Monkey! I am onboard. I'll mostly be saying it to myself, but it's a movement, none the less.
I have a scheduling dilemma because I was too poor/quick to buy and got the Tivo that can only record one show at a time. So the shows I watch live are those that are on at the same time as another show that I have deemed important enough to deserve monkey. An example is Ugly Betty, because I record Grey's (I used to try to watch it online but that made my head hurt), or American Idol because I record Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars.
Jay - liked the column. Reserving judgment on your comedic skills.
Reply