Stuff That Sucks: TV

I love TV. I spend way too much potentially productive time absorbed in entertainment, accomplishing nothing, letting my brain rot and allowing the corporate sponsored stimuli to work it's subliminal crimes on me day in and day out. And it rocks.

TV totally kicks ass. Or, at least, it did... until I discovered the absolute face on fire, edge of your seat insanity that is: 24. 24 is without a doubt the best fucking show in the history of TV. It's the pinnacle of mind smashing entertainment, requiring next to no thought but also moving so fast with so many twists and turn that it grips your attention like grim death and holds on until there just simply is no more. In short, it rocks your pants off.

The problem is, after 24, everything else pretty much blows nuts. I mean, normally I would love the continuation of old favorites like "Heroes" and "Smallville", and I might have enjoyed some newcomers... say "Chuck" maybe, or "The Bionic Woman"... who knows? But now, after having watched three consecutive seasons of 24, my entertainment standards are so high and attention span so low that I almost can't be bothered with regular TV. I need the non-stop, pulse pounding, ball splitting action/adventure/awesomeness of 24 all the time. If it's not 24, I don't want to watch it.

I watched the premiere of Heroes... yawn. I was dosing off during half of it, wondering when it was gonna start getting good. The same with Smallville... I can barely make through the tedious exchanges between the lifeless characters in between the one or two sweet shots per episode where Clark finally does something super. Clark needs to be freaking out way more, ala Jack Bauer, instead of weeping over his annoying dead girlfriend, who was, lets face it, total shit from day one. I mean I know he's super and all, but if you pit him against the iron will of Bauer, I just don't know who to bet on. My gut tells me, Jack would find a way. And he'll do whatever it takes, all whilst blowing up everything he possibly can, and somehow finding time to torture people. Which, by the way, rules.

It's not that other shows are bad... in fact everyone is pretty much still raving about Heroes, and how great it is, and I'm sure that's relatively accurate, except I've been watching back to back episodes of collected seasons of pure TV domination. After three episodes of 24, Heroes is like watching paint dry. And so is, you know, anything that's not 24.

So I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm compelled to encourage you to watch 24, and watch it religiously, and write to your congressman about how great it is, so that they can continue making new episodes until Kiefer Sutherland is 80. (BTW, what the hell kind of hippie name is Kiefer? How do normal-named people like Donald and Shirley go and give their kid a kool-aid name like Kiefer?). On the other hand though, I'm compelled to recommend that you not watch 24, and thus retain the ability to watch other, non-24 TV shows. Ultimately, the decision is yours, but I will say this:






Sorry, gotta go. There's a torture scene.