May 23, 2007
An Epic(ly silly) TV Battle
At our house there was a war... a valiant struggle between TV finale programs.
In this corner, weighing in at 4 megatons of what-the-heck-storylines-are-we-doing-tonight -- LOST!
And in this corner, weighing in at 50 bazillion pounds of how-the-heck-did-Sanjaya-get-so-far-and-why-didn't-Melinda-get-farther-on-this-crazy-TV-favorite -- AMERICAN IDOL!
Sadly, we only have one TiVo (a sad and lowly state for an early adopter of the DVR).
Well, here is how we dealt with it: Jarrod (my son who graduates from high school [Go CHHS Panthers!!] this weekend and will be attending Texas Christian University [Go FROGS!!!] in the fall) jumped between TV sets and at no time was he interested in IDOL. He only watched LOST.
Mika (my wife who keeps our family universe in balance and without whom I would be unbearable, let alone unproductive) kept locked into IDOL.
As for me, I stood stunned… unable to move.
And then the balance changed.
Mika has never missed an episode of IDOL. Either by watching live or watching via TiVo, she's seen them all. Of course, she's also a serious LOST fan (and rents past seasons ALL THE TIME) and decided that TiVo could record IDOL while she and Jarrod would watch the finale of LOST unfold together as a bold mother-son bonding event before he leaves high school and heads for college (how sweet).
That leaves the daddy. You see, my other children were busy and couldn’t watch TV with me (because my other son, Jon Michael, was at church and my other son, Alex, was studying for finals and my daughter, Katie, was working out and my other daughter, Michelle, was on a cruise [a reward for her graduation from nursing school at TCU {GO FROGS!!!}]).
I have never been able to follow LOST (and I've tried because one of our clients really, really, really knows a lot about it and is nearly fanatical about it, so I tried to have a working knowledge about it but, of course, I never did get it) so I thought, let's record LOST and watch IDOL live.
But no... we (I say we, but it doesn’t include me) decided to do it differently after all. We shall record LOST and also watch LOST. (Head scratch goes here.) I’m sure this great idea was because the level of nuance and understated meaning of the legion of LOST storylines far exceeds any critique that Simon Cowell can muster even on his crankiest days, so we'd want to watch it again.
Well, I came up with another idea: watch CBS in another room (alone). The appetizer was NCIS (which, admittedly, aired before either LOST and IDOL and was an easy choice)... the soup n' salad was Criminal Minds (which went head-to-head with both BIG SHOWS and probably failed miserably in the ratings)... and, the main course was one of my favorites, CSI: NY (that Gary Sinese is a fabulous actor and a great American).
So that's it. A whole evening focused on stuff that doesn't matter... but brought a family together (albeit via three different TV sets and excluding the children who had better things to do).