What to Watch?
I have reached a funny place in my TV watching. It's not quite as bad as my music acquisition which these days is mostly cast albums of new musicals these days. But yes. I watch a lot of TV. In high school a joke senior gift to me was a lifetime subscription to TV Guide. I was the person who told everyone what happened in that episode of that show in incredible detail over lunch before recapping was even a thing. My earliest fandoms were TV.
And yet, these days, my acquisition of new TV is odd. As with books and any other pop culture it is less about who you follow to get new suggestions but more about knowing enough about their taste to decide if their recommendations work for you. I follow a handful of TV critics on Twitter and our fave shows overlap only some, but it provides me a useful starting point. I remember as a teen scouring the movie reviews in the paper and essentially determining that my preferences were entirely in opposition to the critics who covered movies. Such that if they liked something, I needed to rethink if I was going to like it.
These days, it's so much easier to access so many more reviewers, but learning whose taste does not align with yours can be just as important. And of course, in the streaming age, shows so rarely disappear. They might move to a service or place you don't have access too. One of my personal limiting factors has been to only subscribe to one and occasionally two streaming services because I really don't even remember to watch the others. Yes, it means there are entire shows I don't have access to. Your own approach to this may be different.
Some shows I have dipped into of late:
-I have reached the end of the currently aired episodes of "Chopped" but found it very good background for I want some noise, I will peek up, but if I get distracted by Twitter, well, I will not have missed much. There are a lot of episodes of it. You have to put up with a lot of jerky pontificating, but I sort of love watching the judges freak out and yell, make sure everything is on the plate.
-As my regular blog readers know, I watch a lot of "Top Chef". Weirdly it is not a show I can rewatch because so few of the seasons don't in some way make me mad in retrospect even if I enjoy it when I watch it.
-"Taste of the Nation" I am still working my way through. I think it's a really interesting show, looking at the roots behind a lot of the foods we consider American. I also came into some okra right after watching the episode on the Gullah GeeChee food, and yum.
-Moving away from cooking, I recently dipped into "Travel Man" which features Richard Ayoade spending 48 hours travelling somewhere. It is a very dry, I'm kind of over it, type thing, and I may well flame out in another few episodes, but so far it is working for me.
-"Designing Women" is a show I have seen quite a lot of. But of course, I had forgotten that the night the lights went out in Georgia speech was episode 2. Wow. It is an old show, so there’s some fatphobia and homophobia, though some of it is called out by some characters.
-"Better Off Ted" - I found this show late when it originally aired, and it was fabulous. There is a lot of workplace flirting, and some fat jokes, but otherwise it is a great show that is sadly even more relevant.
-Also, blog readers will know I loved "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" to pieces. If you want a dramedy that looks at rom-com tropes, mental health, and changing out your dreams, and also has people sing to you about all of those things and more, well, the series is complete and you can go forth.
People I keep an eye on to see what they are into TV-wise:
Alan Sepinwall - @Sepinwall
Daniel Fienberg - @TheFeinPrint
Mo Ryan - @MoRyan
The team at Pop Culture Happy Hour
Alexis Gunderson (who I also happen to know through my book club) - @AlexisKG
Melanie McFarland - @McTelevision
Soraya Mcdonald - @SorayaMcDonald