I watch just enough of my wife's TV shows to (kind of) know what's going on

This is what it's like when I start asking my wife questions about whatever she's watching on television. I think she enjoys when I interrupt her.

My wife Terry has always been someone who gets things done.

Most days, you can find her working around our house cleaning this, organizing that, cooking dinner, or otherwise keeping things together.

Whenever she takes a break from her various household duties (and she isn't out thrifting or spending time with our grandson), you can find her in one of two places.

Sometimes she sits in the corner of the living room putting together large jigsaw puzzles of the kind I could never in my life finish.

Other times she reclines on our couch and watches TV.

This usually takes the form of Terry making her way episode by episode through a multi-season show like "Smallville," "Charmed," "Supernatural," or many others.

Most recently, she has been watching "Once Upon a Time," the ABC fantasy drama series that ran from 2011 through 2018.

Usually she does this alone, as I'm either at the office or otherwise occupied with whatever my to-do list prescribes for the day. But a few times a week, often right after I shower at night, I come sit on the couch and watch whatever she's watching.

Which of course means I randomly pop in and out of television series that have complicated, evolving plots.

Which also means I'm not always 100% sure what's going on.

Still, I've usually seen enough of a given show to know: (a) the main characters, (b) the general direction of the story, and (c) how these series are generally written.

So I can follow along.

Sort of.

I try not to plop right down and start asking my wife questions to bring myself up to speed, but from time to time, that's exactly what I do.

Sometimes she'll answer mid-episode without hitting the pause button, while other times she will sigh, stop the show, and fill me in.

I also do various Google searches to discover major plot points, the fate of certain characters, and even the backgrounds of the actors on the show.

This last item is something that either amuses or annoys my wife, I can't be sure. Out of nowhere I'll pipe in with something like, "The actress who plays the evil queen is Lana Parrilla. She used to be on '24.' She has her own online clothing company."

Terry, who has asked for none of this information, will stare at me for a second. Sometimes she'll sarcastically thank me "for that important update" before returning to her show. Other times she'll simply turn her attention back to the TV without saying a word.

Either way, I like to think I've enhanced her viewing experience.

BLOG RERUN: Things I miss and don't miss about growing up in the 70s and 80s

NOTE: This post originally ran here on the blog 11 years ago today (August 12, 2013, for the calendar-challenged). I bring it back now because I still miss and don't miss these things.

Things I Miss

Fantasy Island

There have been some good shows on TV in the past 50 years, but none have matched the awesomeness that was Fantasy Island. Saturday nights at 10, as I recall. ABC aired it right after The Love Boat, and I have to believe they dominated the ratings. Mr. Rourke ruled the island with an iron fist ("Smiles, everyone, smiles...NOW."), but it was Tattoo who got the girls. Something about that little guy was apparently irresistible. 

The Sony Walkman

I could walk around and listen to music outside. OUTSIDE. Without carrying a 14-pound boom box. I could go running and listen to music. Or cycling. Or whatever it was we did back then (I can't quite remember how we filled our days, to be honest.) Of course, the music was on cassette. And you had to fast-forward and rewind to get to different songs. And that fast-forwarding and rewinding drained the life from your double-A batteries. But it was revolutionary, don't you understand?

This version of Michael Jackson

I miss that guy.

Things I Don't Miss

People smoking...everywhere

Good Lord, it was terrible. You kids have no idea how good you have it in this department. People just lit up all over the place...in their homes, in their cars, in their offices, in church, etc. OK, maybe not in church. As far as I know. I mean, I didn't go to church in the 70s. The point is, the world smelled like cigarettes. Which is to say the world was disgusting and it stank. The fact that there are still people who smoke amazes me. I just assumed we all collectively came to our senses round about 1997 and that everyone was going to quit. What did I miss?

Four channels of TV

After the iPod and the Keurig coffee maker, I say cable/streaming television is Western Civilization's greatest contribution to the universe over the past several decades. When I was growing up in Cleveland, you had channels 3 (NBC), 5 (ABC), 8 (CBS), and 43 (independent). And at some point there was channel 61, too. And that was it. The reception was bad during storms AND YOU HAD TO GET UP TO CHANGE THE CHANNEL. Who does that? Not us now. Which is why we're all fat. But still...

Rubik's Cube

There wasn't anything intrinsically wrong with Rubik's Cube, other than the fact that I could never solve it. Ever. Even bought a book explaining how to solve it and couldn't understand it. Yet there were people appearing on "That's Incredible" who, given a randomly configured Rubik's Cube, could solve the thing in, like, 12 seconds. Maybe less, I don't remember. All I know is that I was bitter about it then and I'm bitter about it now. DARN YOU AND YOUR DEMONIC INVENTION, ERNO RUBIK!

My TV viewing is mostly snippets of whatever my wife is watching

This is a common scene in our house:

Terry will be taking a break from one of the million tasks, large and small, that comprise her day. She often does this by plopping down on the couch with a cup of coffee to watch television.

She will be happily watching something when I come wandering into the living room. The screen catches my eye. I stand there for a few minutes watching with her.

I become sufficiently interested that I will ask her a few questions about the characters and the plot. Then I either stand and watch some more, or else I head off to do whatever it was I had intended to do in the first place.

Then it happens again in a day or two. Sometimes I will actually sit down and watch for 10 or 15 minutes. More often than not, though, I stand. Dads often do this and I don't know why. Maybe we simply don't want to commit.

Anyway, over time, I become familiar enough with the show that I can pop in six episodes later and quickly catch up on the action.

Sometimes it's a Netflix series, other times it's a competition show like "Dancing with the Stars." Either way, I never watch the whole thing with her, but rather just enough to establish a baseline level of knowledge that allows me to ask educated questions like, "Are those kids on 'The Fosters' still making bad choices?"

I don't think of myself as a TV guy, and it's not because I have any objections to TV. Nowadays, there's far more good writing and acting on TV than there is in movies.

It's just that, for the most part, I don't have time for it. I choose to fill my non-working hours with other things that aren't any better or worse than TV. They're just other choices.

But Terry has good taste in onscreen entertainment, so quite often when I shuffle through the living room, I see something interesting. I know I should be tackling a particular chore or getting ready to leave for a PA announcing gig or something, but I can't seem to look away.

So I end up watching maybe 15% of a multi-season series through a string of 10-minute (or smaller) chunks of viewing.

If there are important bits I know I've missed, YouTube will more often than not have those scenes and I can use that to fill in my knowledge gaps.

It's not the recommended way to enjoy high- (or low-) quality television, but I can tell you it works.

Dear Family: Please close the cupboard doors

Really, that's all I'm asking. If you open a kitchen cupboard, please close it afterward. That's it.

Oh, and also clean up any crumbs you leave on the counter. Please do that, too.

And don't put a butter knife covered in peanut butter in the sink. Wipe off the peanut butter and put it in the dishwasher.

Just those three things: Close cupboards, clean crumbs, wipe off peanut butter.

And wash the pot when you make noodles. Don't leave it for someone else to do.

While I'm thinking about it, you'll also want to turn off all lights when you leave a room. Don't leave the laundry room light on, don't leave the basement light on, don't leave the mudroom light(s) on, and don't leave the upstairs hall light on. I'm constantly turning those off.

So cupboards, crumbs, peanut butter, pot, and lights. Those are my requests.

And those of you who cannot open and close doors quietly while others are sleeping (you know who you are), please learn to do so. And practice walking quietly on your tiptoes and not stomping around the house and up and down stairs late at night.

Maybe also make sure all doors are locked if I'm already asleep.

And make sure the TV is turned off when you turn off the cable box. Sometimes the TV itself is left on all night.

So, yeah...cupboards, crumbs, peanut butter, pot, lights, quiet movement, locked doors, and turn off the TV.

On second thought, you'll never remember all of that. Just stick to the cupboard doors. I can be content with just that.

My poor mom

I should start by saying that my mother is a wonderful woman. A real saint. Salt of the earth. All of that stuff.

But I reserve the right to make fun of her, and will do so now.

I can do this safely, you see, because my mother doesn't own a computer and therefore there is no chance she will ever see this post. Unless one of you snitches shows it to her or tells her about it, in which case we'll need to meet on the playground after school and settle our differences through old-fashioned, bare-knuckle fisticuffs. You're totally going down.

Anyway, my mom is not what you would call technologically savvy. The last semi-electronic appliance she learned to operate was the microwave, and that was back in the early 80s when (true story) she was afraid she would somehow incinerate the planet and therefore didn't use it for the first several weeks it was in her kitchen.

NOTE TO MOM: It's not a thermonuclear device. It's a microwave. It's deadly only to the Stouffer's frozen pizzas you stick in there.

It's not that Mom is anti-technology or anything. She just isn't interested in having a computer or a smart phone. Many of her friends and relatives are on Facebook and the like, but it's not something she particularly wants. Which is fine.

The problem is that when she does interact with modern technology and finds herself stuck – which I will say here happens on a fairly regular basis – my sister, brother or I are the ones called upon to bail her out.

And given all that Mom has done for us throughout our lives, this is in no way a problem or an inconvenience.

But you would think that once we show her how to solve a particular technological dilemma, she would write down the solution or otherwise memorize it so that it doesn't become a problem again.

And again. And again. And again.

This happens most often with her TV. It's a simple flat screen for which she has digital cable service. Time-Warner, in their infinite wisdom, has given her a remote that only a trained fighter pilot could confidently operate. It has (and I'm estimating here because I haven't actually counted) 4,718 buttons, all but three of which do things for which she has no use.

So what often happens is that Mom wants to watch TV, but she can't figure out how to turn the darn thing on. Or, if she does manage to turn it on, how to get to the channel she wants.

Or – and let me assure you, this has happened – how to make sure the TV is operating in English and not in Spanish. This is my absolute favorite Mom TV Conundrum, because listening to her try to pronounce the onscreen Spanish words as they appear makes me laugh so hard I cry.

I know I'm a terrible person. You don't have to tell me.

So every couple of weeks, I am summoned to her house to get her TV back in working order so she can watch Oprah or the Indians game or whatever (and in English). And every time I forget to write down what I did so that she can fix the problem herself next time.

In the meantime, I think I've figured out what we need to do to the remote control to help her:

Five TV shows I will stop and watch any time, anywhere

I've mentioned before that I don't watch much TV. And it's not because I have any philosophical objections to it, I just have too many other things going on.

But when I do sit down for some tube time, and I actually have control of the remote (NOTE: THIS HAPPENS APPROXIMATELY TWICE PER CENTURY), I am for whatever reason drawn to the channels that air old shows.

Maybe I'm just nostalgic, but the shows I like all aired in the 60s and 70s. I don't necessarily think TV was better then than it is now. But I think it was more suited to my tastes. And we're talking about me here, so the older shows get the nod.

If I'm flipping through our 47,000 digital cable channels and come across any of these programs, I will stop and watch. Every time. Guaranteed:

(1) M*A*S*H

There was a period in the early and mid-80s when WUAB Channel 43 in Cleveland would show a rerun of M*A*S*H every night at 7. And my brother would record it on our old, 50-pound Curtis Mathis VCR. This was a VCR that came out back when "VHS or Beta?" actually meant something. It was heavy. And it lasted a long time.

Anyway, my brother recorded all the episodes of M*A*S*H, which got me into watching the show. There was nothing else like it on TV, nor has there been since. If you're a M*A*S*H fan, usually you have to declare your allegiance in four important areas:

• Henry Blake or Sherman Potter? (correct answer = Sherman Potter)
• Trapper or BJ? (correct answer = Trapper)
• Frank Burns or Charles Emerson Winchester? (correct answer = Frank Burns)
• Old Hateful Hot Lips or Later Sympathetic Hot Lips? (correct answer = Old Hateful Hot Lips)

I think I would pay $20 just for the chance to watch an episode of M*A*S*H right now. I wonder where my brother's stock of recorded VHS episodes is?

(2) Hogan's Heroes

Sticking with the military theme...

Everything about this show was wildly inaccurate and improbable. But that was the point, right? You either enjoyed seeing the Nazis portrayed as semi-lovable buffoons or you were appalled by it. I think I've always been a little of both.

The guy for whom I felt the worst was Kinch, also known as Sgt. Ivan Kinchloe. Kinch was the African-American guy. He also had the best fake German accent. But he could only use it over the phone or the radio because...well, because not even a show like this could get away with having a dark-skinned guy pass for an Aryan in person. So Kinch always had to stay back at the POW camp while the other guys went out on wacky adventures dressed as genocidal psychopaths. Poor guy.

(3) The Andy Griffith Show

Who made this show? Don Knotts made this show. Barney Fife is easily one of the top five funniest characters in television history. And I'm willing to argue him up into the top three.

Special mention goes to Otis the Town Drunk, who wins the award for Best Portrayal of a Perpetually Inebriated Person Back When It Was OK to Make Fun of Alcoholism. Otis even let himself into jail every night just to get away from his wife. I love 60s TV!

May I present to you an excellent scene in which these two classic characters interact? Don't mind if I do:

(4) The Carol Burnett Show

The fun here was figuring how far you could get into any given episode before Tim Conway would get Harvey Korman to bust up. Harvey didn't necessarily want to bust up, of course. He was trying to stay in character. But Tim was so brilliant, and so spontaneously funny, I can't imagine anyone could have held a straight face for long.

And let's not forget Carol herself. And Vicki Lawrence. All four of the main cast members were outstanding comedic actors...to the point that I think they spoiled us for any other comedy variety show. The genre sort of fell by the wayside once the 80s hit, and I think it's because The Carol Burnett Show was so good.

(5) All in the Family

If you make me watch one sitcom over and over for the rest of my life, I'm probably going with this one.

It's dated in many ways, and part of its genius lies in how far ahead of its time the show really was. But I still think much of the writing was timeless, and it worked because Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton were so darned good.

Please, if you do nothing else today, watch this scene (my favorite one in the show's history). I can't imagine you not at least smiling at it, if not cracking up. Just awesome:

"The Biggest Loser" is the roadside accident of television

As I've mentioned before, I don't get the chance to watch a lot of TV. I have nothing philosophical against it, I just don't have the time.

Even during my two-plus months of unemployment, there have always been freelance articles to work on, kids activities to attend, household cleaning and chores to take care of, and (lately) blog posts to write. Not a lot of time to sit in front of the flat screen and chill out.

But there are certain things I make a point of watching. And "The Biggest Loser" is one of them.

I love "The Biggest Loser." So does most of my family. It's one of the few shows we'll DVR and watch together.

If you ask me why I love this program so much, I'll hesitate. Because I'm not really sure what it is that attracts me. I like seeing people transform their lives. I like the drama and the competition. And I can certainly relate to the weight loss aspect of it these days.

But if I'm being honest with myself, I will say the thing that mesmerizes me is the emotional aspect of the show. Yes, what the contestants are doing (attempting to lose mass amounts of weight in a relatively short period of time) is ostensibly a biological undertaking. They're constantly working out. They're changing their eating habits.

Yet there is always an underlying psycho-emotional story for everyone on the show. And the producers do their best to exploit that. It makes for good TV when the 25-year-old, 450-pound woman breaks down and starts talking about the thought patterns and habits that have gotten her to the point of diabetes, coronary artery disease, and a host of other health problems.

I always feel like I'm prying when they show these emotional swan dives on the air. Like it's something I'm not supposed to see and I should be looking away.

But I can't help it. I stare at the screen the same way I would stare at an accident in which body parts are strewn across an expressway. Part of you knows you don't want to get involved, but another part is incapable of disengaging.

We do that, I think, because it makes us feel better about ourselves. "I may be 20 pounds overweight, but at least I'm not like HIM," we'll think. But for me, it's also because I'm looking for a reason to root for these people, and I'm much more likely to wave the flag for someone who has legitimate emotional issues that manifest themselves in overeating. I want them to do well. I want them to get better. I want them to win.

There's another part of "The Biggest Loser" that makes me uncomfortable, and that's the amount of weight these contestants lose. It's one thing to drop double-digit pounds your first week or two on the ranch. It's another to keep losing that much weight nine or 10 weeks later.

Is that healthy? I know they're under medical supervision and that they devote their daily lives to exercise and diet. But it creates an incredibly unrealistic expectation among viewers who may not know the basics of healthy weight loss.

I hear it among people at my Weight Watchers meetings all the time. "Yeah," someone will say, "I only lost three pounds this week. It was kind of disappointing." WHAT?!? Disappointing? You should be thrilled at losing three pounds in a week. In fact, if anything, you should worry that you're losing the weight too quickly if you lose three pounds several weeks in a row.

I have to say, it has taken me years to learn this, but a half-pound or one-pound weight loss per week is ideal. Both emotionally and physically. The hardest thing for me about losing weight is not adjusting my approach to food, but rather adjusting my expectations of the results. Slow and steady is far, far, FAR more likely to result in sustained, long-term weight loss than rapidly dropping the pounds.

Which, again, I think is a lesson not being taught to "Biggest Loser" fans who may not have done the homework themselves or who are rookies in the weight loss game. No, ma'am, you are NOT going to drop 11 pounds this coming week like Gina, the middle-aged contestant who has already lost 83 pounds in the previous two months. Nor SHOULD you.

But still, I watch. And I will continue watching. As with any reality show, you quickly identify your favorites and start pulling for them. I want all of them to do well.

I just wish I didn't care so much about the fact that their mothers fed them unhealthy food their whole lives or that the four miscarriages caused them to go on eating binges. It's interesting information, but I can't help but think it's none of my business.