Watchin’ The Good Wife, With, uh…My Good Wife

So, first off, apologies for neglecting everyone. This (last) year has been a doozy, but I have definitely been missing being able to write about the stuff that the wife and I have been watching over the course of the past year and into the new.

(and please forgive me if I’m rusty at this, I’ve been doing nothing but writing dissertation stuff in the meantime, which I find tends to stifle the ‘fun’ writer in me)

As I’m sure many of you also do, in addition to the shows that we watch on  a regular primetime schedule, we’ve been working our way through complete series, binge-ing on marathons of complete  shows almost exclusively. The most recent of these is The Good Wife, which we bought for real cheap at Target, and which we are a couple of episodes into  the second season (so please, no spoilers – we’re behind!)

We both agree that the show is enjoyable, but not always because the show is especially good. It definitely gets better (and much weirder) in the second season, with the addition of some new characters and a little bit more political intrigue, but we have discussed what we would definitely change about the show (as with all intelligent conversations about TV) and what doesn’t work.

So here is is our unscientific list of things that should happen on the show, if we had our way.

1. Get rid of the kids. Alicia Florrick’s son and daughter are two of the most annoying characters on TV.

2. Spin off Kalinda and Blake into their own show called “Lawyer-Detective Battle Royale” (or something like that). For that matter, put these two, the children, Alicia’s husband and political intrigue plot, and the son’s insane girlfriend into their own series.

3. Stop pretending that the writers of the show know anything about how modern political campaigns are run, or the importance of youtube, which no one seems to know anything about. Is it possible that I am underestimating the extent to which the nation is fixated on the Chicago State’s Attorney race?

4. Show “the other side” of things, by showing the police in the series at their most inept. It really seems as though only Alicia and Kalinda can find evidence in the show, so I would love to see how the “other side” works.

Speaking of which, my favorite part of the series is actually watching Kalinda investigate things. We agree that the actress playing this part is somewhat limited in her capacity to convey things like subtlety, so it’s always a joy to watch her go into investigative mode. We also love her insane conflict with former Friday Night Lights quarterback Jason Street (whose facial hair in this show connotes his evil, as per my theories of beard acting, elaborated here) .

I have a really hard time believing that she actually won an Emmy for playing the role, but agree that her part is definitely a vital element to the success of the show.

Okay, that seems about it from me for this post. In all likelihood I’ll have more to report when I get further into the season. I’ll end by saying that there is obviously as much enjoyment to be had from watching the good elements as the bad in the show, and the ability to watch episodes back to back enhances the pleasure of these elements, which may otherwise go missing on a weekly viewing.

What Would You Do…If You Cancelled Your Premium Cable During NHL Playoffs?

Very recently, my wife and I made the decision to cut our premium HD cable package (which we only got because it was part of a Time-Warner bundle) in order to use the new TV watching alternatives like Hulu and streaming netflix.

But when my laptop cord stopped working the other day – thus reducing almost all of our choices – we found ourselves in a strange fix. In a world with only four channels where there used to be infinite amounts of crap to watch, we suddenly found ourselves watching Prime-time scripted programming and looking to each other to ask – who watches this stuff?

Outside of NBCs so-called “must-see comedy bloc” (more on that in a later post) every show on  Thursday night seems to have a handsome but quirky male detective and a wisecracking female sidekick with bangs. Flipping between Bones and the Mentalist (with a little Grey’s Anatomy thrown in for good measure) produced one all-encompassing conclusion:

If you were caught in the net of the plots of these shows and somehow invested in the characters, I’m sure they were rewarding, but for an outsider looking in, it was almost alienating – and also – so gross (click here if you want to see the bowling alley crime scene in the last episode)!

The main question we have is – who is the audience for this stuff? Recalling that even the youngest of network audiences (NBC) is 48(!) I would venture to guess that crime shows skew older. But also, what kind of image of the world is this producing?

The example of $#*! my dad says, as well as its renewal may be a prime example of the disconnect between generations raised on TV and those who were not.

But on to last night, where a solid marathon viewing of ABC shows brought more surprises, some pleasant, some not.

On the pleasant side was ABC’s What Would You Do? bizarre cross between Candid Camera, Punk’d and The Price is Right, where you “win” the chance to either be an ethical person, or a complete asshole, depending on your reaction to an awful situation staged around you.

More often than not, the show ends up actually producing better people than not, as seen in this clip, where a gentleman (in the best sense of the word) defends a gay couple with children against a bigoted waitress in a fairly moving scene.

http://abcnews.go.com/WhatWouldYouDo/hidden-cameras-roll-cafe-patrons-defend-gay-parents/story?id=13631544

As this particular episode was shot in Texas (where we live) one of the show’s more interesting conclusions was the interventions on issues like a discussion on abortion on religious, rather than strictly moral grounds. I also think that the Texans on this show mostly showed themselves as the friendly sorts who have no problem getting involved in any circumstances.

The show is a pretty fascinating and paradoxically moving portrait of what people do in particular situations and the payoff is when people “win” by doing the right thing and helping others out in tough situations.

On the other hand, it seems as though the show is being sold by ABC as news. It is a spin-off of 20/20, which I hadn’t watched in years. What disturbed us most was the level of address in all of these programs, and the idea that this is what is passing for “news” on network TV. For instance, the hard-hitting story “Infomercial-Nation” which spent a half-hour suggesting that infomercials do not, in fact, sell quality products.

All of which makes me pine for a decent internet signal or a better way to find and stream the hockey playoffs to my TV. As it stands now, my method resembles a combination of holding my laptop in my hand and yelling at the TV as I miss the goal. In other words, despite all of the technology at my disposal, I am left with the same options of 20 years ago, perhaps as clear a sign of the apocalypse as anything else.

More Like “Secret Thousand-aire”

Reader Note – This post was in process for a little while. I have resurrected it in an effort to clear my desk and to get on with new material.

March 20th(ish)

Yesterday’s TV viewing was a day of many tears as my wife and I not only watched the finale of Big Love, but also watched the first episode of ABC’s Secret Millionaire on hulu.

Secret Millionaire Dani Johnson emotes

In this episode, “secret millionaire” Dani Johnson returns to the streets and is assigned the task of giving back to a community and volunteer organizations that desperately need money and help. Johnson is an interesting subject, as she went from poverty to millionaire with her motivational speaking tours, all of which allowed her to achieve the wealth and happiness that the episode initially presents her with.

The show follows the trend of what Laurie Ouelette calls “Do good TV”, which is basically a show that makes money by showing a bunch of extremely down on their luck folks and giving them stuff while making us cry.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition seems to be the exemplar here, but the economic downturn has resulted in a proliferation of these shows, including Undercover Boss, Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, School Pride, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, The Biggest Loser and now Secret Millionaire.

According to Ouelette, what is interesting about these shows is that they actually end up servicing the means of the capitalist system, favoring the rich rather than the poor saps who receive their charity. In her words, “Do Good TV” classifies

 “deserving” individuals and redistributing the surplus of informational capitalism in a manner of its own choosing, TV also drew from an arrogant philanthropic logic that can be traced to Robber Baron industrialists. The difference is that TV has fused charity work with the rationality of the market, so that there’s no distinction between public service and cultural product.

What is so interesting about these shows is just how fine the line between helping people and crass commercialism is. Not only do these shows presumably help those in need, but they furnish them with the finest new products from their various sponsors.

This is exactly the subject matter of Erin Copple Smith’s recent post on Antenna: Egregious Product Placement: The Biggest Loser. What is interesting to me is just how seamless the integration of these moments are to the narrative, and how they actually go so far as to freeze the show’s narrative for a moment.

The phenomenon is really taken to the next level with Undercover Boss, which basically fuses this philanthropic capitalist model, with a full-length ad for a businesses “ethical” practices.

While there is always a certain satisfaction in watching how often the CEOs of these companies are fired, and certainly an emotional reward in seeing workers rewarded for their labours, the relationship between the cheapness of these shows and the revenue they generate is really what I take issue with.

In almost every case, the sheer amount of advertising in Reality TV generally significantly undermines any positive emotional reward of viewing, or emoting towards the subjects of these shows.

None of which is to say that these shows aren’t affecting, that they don’t serve some sort of function to spread awareness about people who work hard, they certainly do their job on my wife and I, who are presumably people with hearts who are definitely hooked in by the shows and their subjects.

The problem is that none consider the larger systemic issues of poverty and low wages, and ultimately end up exploiting their subjects.

Which brings me back to my original sticking point – that Secret Millionaire is extremely cheap. Instead of offering a real model of philanthropy (the millions implied in the title) the show basically gives away $50,000 total to several worthy causes. To me this seems like an unfair exchange for the many tears that accompany very sad lives that are burdened by poverty, rising health care costs and a total systemic breakdown of the social safety net.

The Vital Importance of Shemar Moore to this blog’s success

Okay – this is my third attempt to write this post. Apparently every time I hit “save draft” my computer thinks this means “erase post”. So I’ll make this short and sweet.

I’m back after being very busy.

Consistent interest in this blog has been sustained almost completely by people typing “Shemar Moore” and “wife” into google, and finding themselves here instead.

So in order to fulfill the needs of my two sets of readers, here is what you came for:

In the meantime, my wife and I have still been watching tv, so I am ready and eager to continue to talk about our viewing habits and reactions to the stuff we watch. So look for upcoming posts on The Secret Millionaire, Undercover Boss, Bethanny Ever After, the swelling national (Canadian) pride to be found by  watching HGTV’s House Hunters, and our Saturday ritual of watching Property Ladder and Yard Crashers.

I also plan on writing about why I love watching Kevin O’ Leary on Shark Tank…

…as well as why we think Cobie Smothers’ role on How I Met Your Mother is offensive, and why we (as a unified front) hate Glee (there are aesthetic as well as personal reasons…) and how much we love Season Five of Friday Night Lights.

Ugh - Gweneth Again? (I blame this image for erasing my previous posts too!)

Finally, I hope to write something soon on Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, which is currently on the top of our list for “Must-See” viewing.

Okay – more posts to come! Thanks for your continued interests in images of Shemar Moore!

Watchin’ TV – Long Distance – With My Wife

Watching TV By Myself, With My Wife

First off, apologies for all but abandoning this blog. I have been super-busy with the day-to-day needs of working on my degree, studying for exams, teaching, and finishing up a book.

Somehow, in my absence, readers have continued to visit, and the blog just hit 2500 views, despite the fact that I haven’t written anything since last November. So thanks yous go out to my casual visitors and dedicated friends, and whoever happens to stumble upon this thing while searching for links to Rachel Zoe and Andy Cohen.

So updates:

Those of you who know me know that my wife has been out of town on a contract, another impediment to a blog dedicated to the experience of watching TV together. Nevertheless, TV has continued to play an important role in our relationship, even when she’s not around. In some ways, it provides some sort of sense of normalcy, knowing that despite our long distance, we are still the same people, performing the same rituals, by watching the same shows.

Which reminds me, in an odd sort of way, to An American Tail. One lyric that I will never get out of my head is from “Somewhere Out There” in Steven Spielberg and Don Bluth’s collaboration.

“And even though I know / how very far apart we are, It helps to think / we might be wishing /on the same bright star…”

While I never saw the movie, I did see the sub-par Saturday morning cartoon later on, decided that Fievel was annoying to me, and put it out of my mind for years.

To me, this song is appropriate for several reasons: 1) My mother has a tape recording of my sister singing this song as a duet, which she listens to repeatedly when she misses us, bringing the double whammy of distance and ideas of home, 2) As stupid as this sounds, I think that the “same bright star” for my wife and I, is TV, and most often, this TV is tuned to Bravo.

So, while it’s been difficult to be away from one another, TV has helped to bridge the distance, and somehow allowed us to spend some quality time watching low-quality behaviour.

Beverly Hills' The Amazingly Aggressive Psychic Allison DuBois

For us (or for me at least) it seems the knowledge that we’re sitting in different places, yet watching the same stuff helps to bridge the distance and to create a sense of normalcy and shared pleasure that we can still maintain contact despite the distance.

Though I’ve talked about this before, Bravo also tends to provide the most bang for your buck in terms of a) shutting off your brain and just letting it happen, b) not having to decide what else to watch, because their shows just blend into one another (kind of like the ending of Michael Jackson’s “Black and White” video), and c) Entertainment value! Every time I think I’ve seen it all, Bravo delivers something I could have never imagined…like Cookie Monster on Top Chef?!

There is also the what the…? factor, as seen in the “Producer’s Cut” of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills: The Dinner Party, which features some of the oddest behaviour from the participants.

(I can’t help posting this version!)

Despite the claims that TV is becoming “old media” my opinion is that TV is still something that bonds people together. The emergence of hulu and timeshfiting technologies seems only to have increased people’s ability to engage with TV and to watch things dependent on their own schedules. For couples, this can also mean “saving up” episodes and series, for future viewings together, or for conversations later on.

As for my wife and I, sadly, the busier we have gotten in the past little while, and the later that my wife has to work (during Primetime! – thus canceling the opportunity to talk about the night’s viewing) the distance seems more substantial.

I look forward to visiting in a couple of days, hanging out, and catching up, obviously with each other, but also on our deficit of shows.

Watching Criminal Minds with my In-Laws

First off, apologies. This has been a super-busy couple of weeks for me filled with family visits, writing for my “real job” and lots of admin work to boot.

In the meantime, I would urge you to visit my most recent post on the online journal that I co-edit, Flow . The article is on the 25th anniversary of one of my favourite mock-documentaries, The Canadian Conspiracy and the article can be found here:

So my last post talked about the pleasures of watching TV with my wife’s grandmother. Since she left town, I can’t quite bring myself to watch the show, if only because I feel that I would need to watch with my Dancing With the Stars buddy (who I should call for an update about the show.

In the meantime, I’ve been getting behind on my usual shows, as well as watching lots of TV with my wife’s parents.

We watch different shows too. Rather than watching the latest Mad Men or other “quality” show, they would much rather sit down to the three or four shows that they religiously watch – NCIS, Criminal Minds, and the now-extinct 24.

A couple of things strike me when watching these shows. Firstly, they are all about super-special crime fighting teams led by a serious leader. Second, each of the team has their own specialty, one is the fast-talking genius, another is perhaps the martial arts expert, one is the female computer-geek, and one (my mother-in-law informs me) is the hunky eye-candy.

I think that Shemar Moore is who my mother in law refers to as the "hunk" in the show...

I’m also intrigued by the presence of the geeky, female computer expert, who seem to appear in every version of these shows and virtually have interchangeable personalities.

There’s Abby from NCIS…

Who is presumably what grown-ups think of when they think of goth types…

And then there’s Criminal Minds’ Penelope Garcia, who has a penchant for wearing plaid or flowery twin-sets, and whose quirk is talking in hip-hop lingo to the hunky Shemar Moore throughout the show, while she quickly accesses the info that the team needs to solve the crime.

Maybe this is because I’m currently reading William Goldman’s great book Adventures in the Screen Trade. He talks about how the main difference between TV and film is that the TV industry is predicated on speed and the need to get things done really fast.

While I don’t necessarily agree with Goldman when he says that TV always features “low quality acting,” I do think that his description of TV actors as “one-takers” is an interesting point of comparison between TV and movies.

Here, he talks about how TV acting is populated by “one-takers,” a term that denotes actors “who can give you a reasonable line reading the first time.”

Though I could have chosen just about any clip, I feel like this one, with its flat delivery, the exposition of “quirky” dialogue and the sheer volume of words is typical of the kinds of exchanges in the show.

I feel like this idea extends to these shows derivitive nature as they almost seem to be written as first drafts as well.To me, Criminal Minds seems a little bit like a cross between every serial killer film that I’ve ever seen, with a little bit of  soap opera thrown in for good measure.

And perhaps this is all part of the appeal. The shorthand nature of TV, recognizing its character types the first time, as well being hooked by the ongoing storyline has my in-laws hooked, and I can’t say I blame them at all.

Hearing my mother-in-law talk about the intensity of last season’s finale, its obvious that these shows are doing something right to engender their high ratings and their appeal to a more adult demographic. More to the point, it makes me think that sometimes I ought to be thinking more fully about why despite the fact that these serials are so appealing to a huge audience, we still insist on analyzing “boutique” programming instead.

Watching With My Wife’s Grandmother – Dancing With the Stars Edition

Apologies in advance, dear reader for neglecting you and my blog in the past little while. Believe me, it has hurt me more than it hurts you.

Part of the reason for my absence is my wife’s family’s visit, which has yielded some pretty interesting observations and which I hope to write about this week.

They have different viewing tastes than I do, to be certain, but I am beginning to realize something very basic about watching TV with them around.

Quite simply, watching TV in groups is much more fun than watching it alone.

I have been getting that impression for a while now. As a media studies instructor, we force our students to watch certain shows (for educational purposes, of course). One of the shows that always goes over well is NBC’s The Biggest Loser, which produces predictable laughter, but also the occasional unpredictable tear…

Recently, my wife and I have also made the pilgrimage to Austin’s famous Alamo Drafthouse to watch some of the latest episodes of Mad Men. Though I had seen one of the episodes we watched before, the audience revealed some of the episodes big laughs, as well as illuminating the intricate comic timing in the particular episode.

Dancing With the Stars, Season 11

So last night’s experiment began with my wife’s grandmother, who asked me to put on Dancing With the Stars, just so we could see Bristol Palin dance.

Well, it began with that way, but we instantly broke the  promise when we watched the entire show.

Even though the rest of the family made fun of my wife’s grandmother and I, they all ended up watching in the end. As Jennifer Grey (of Dirty Dancing fame) they all conspicuously left whatever they were doing to watch with us.

(My wife even choked up a little when Jennifer got sad at the memory of Patrick Swayze…)

A couple of points. First, I have never watched this show at all, with my wife or anyone else. I’ve never really gotten the appeal. I’m not so much a fan of watching shows where people can’t do stuff, I would rather watch people who can.

I may have gone on about this somewhere else, but I think that this is part of the major appeal of reality TV that features people who can’t do stuff. For one, it generates a (false?) sense of belief that your average person can do anything they put their mind to – who cares about training for years to become a dancer?

The other thing I think it does is cultivate a false sense of expertise in the viewer. Please don’t be mistaken, I’m not trying to insult anyone, but my experience in watching these shows has made me an “expert” on interior design, fashion, cooking, singing, and obviously, dancing.

Just like Tim Gunn, I am now an expert in fashion

My second point is, TV is a social medium. As we sat there Grandma and I swapped stories about who we liked on the show, who we thought was terrible and why. She filled me in with which host was mean, which one was gay and which one was nice, and I filled her in on who “The Situation” was.

I even flipped over to a moment of Jersey Shore, just so she could see the crew in action. When she saw him she said “Oh, obviously he’s on steroids.” I also tried to tell her about his new product, a vodka infused with protein, and she was as perplexed as I was about why he was famous.

Which brings me back to my original point, which seems to be that watching with someone else stimulates debate, conversation and sharing.

Neither of us could figure out why Bristol was there in the first place, or why she scored so high, but it seemed as though her badness was just as important as whether or not she was good.

Most important, it generated a shared experience, and something else to talk about as we two “experts” ranged through topics like who could dance, who was a good entertainer, and who should just give up and go home.

Last Night’s dancing summary:

I’ll stop here for now, but will probably talk a little bit next time on the pleasures of watching Modern Family as a group tomorrow.

Watching Vinnie Chase’s Dark Slide

Up until now, you would have probably gotten the impression that all my wife and I do is watch reality TV together. We watch scripted shows too especially those on HBO.

Watching Entourage has always been a bit of a distraction for my wife and I. Seemingly the least substantial of the HBO shows (well, until Bored to Death, but don’t get me started on that one), Entourage has almost always offered the fantasy life of Hollywood without any of the bad stuff that comes with success.

That is, until this season, which has taken a very dark, yet rewarding, turn.

Until now, every season followed a typical story arc.

Hollywood slacker Vinnie Chase turns down a blockbuster franchise and gets to work with an auteur director. Along the way, he has sex with dozens of women and smokes as much pot as he can.

Vince’s manager, E rises through the corporate ladder with the help of his rich, dutiful and beautiful fiance Sloan.

With a little struggle, Johnny Drama and Turtle get whatever they want in the end, whether this is a tv series, girlfriend or a record label.

As for Ari, no matter how horrible he is to people and no matter what abusive slur comes out of his filthy mouth, his empire, agency and power have grown every season.

Oh, and along the way, famous people drop by to talk to Ari, (like the recurring appearances of Jeffrey Tambor and Bob Saget) and real-life celebrities stop by to uncomfortably say hello to Vince and his crew.

“Once you have everything…what next?”

One thing that’s always bugged us about the show is that there have never really been any consequences for anyone’s actions. They get away with everything but murder and the role of dumb luck plays an important role in how Vince’s career functions.

(Just like the time in Season 6 when Vince turned down everything he was offered, only to get a part in Martin Scorsese’s “Gatsby”)

No one else has to make any choices either. Money, power and success just seems to keep falling in everybody’s lap in the enchanted world of Hollywood.

Vince even has a friendly relationship with the paparazzi and the media, who somehow let him eat unhindered at coffee shops, and are never judgmental about his lifestyle.

(This is Tobey Maguire just trying to get out of  a parking lot…)

There’s never anything terribly offensive about Hollywood, where even the most cutthroat agent is a sweetheart who loves his family.

The tagline for this season preview poses an interesting question, once you have everything, what next?

The  addition of porn star Sasha Grey as Vince’s new girlfriend has also added some much-needed weight to the show, by actually referring to Hollywood’s “sister” industry (pornography) as well as dishing out some moral complexity.

More to the point, her character has provided the series an excuse to revel in Vince’s dark side and to question whether he’ll get out of this dark territory.

As opposed to previous seasons, where the characters can behave in whatever way they want -  doing as many drugs, having as much sex, insulting as many people as they can – Season 7 finally presents its characters with consequences.

The result of all this is they payoff for the invested spectator. Even though my wife and I would consider ourselves casual viewers at best, this season has led us to reinvest in the cast of characters, who are actually making complex choices rather than shallow ones.

More to the point, they’re finally following through on what their characters represent. Vince’s casual attitude towards everything – blowing off appointments with agents and generally doing whatever he feels like – has actually led him into the dark worlds of jealousy, addiction and the ugly side of Hollywood success.

For Ari, his obnoxiousness, workaholism and mean-spiritedness has resulted in his loss (or potential loss) of what was once most important to him.

In other words, people are finally paying for their bad decisions.

To me (and Aristotle) this is the basis of conflict, and ultimately, Drama. Up until now, the show has really had nothing at stake. We have long known that the gang will always be okay, and that their world is one of fantasy and pleasure.

Without giving anything away, I will say that the last episode of this season showed, that world of guilt-free pleasure is no longer the one that the gang inhabits. In a stunning reversal of formula, this season does not end as happily as every other previous one…

In other words, even if you jumped off the Entourage wagon long ago, this season might be the one to reinvest in. The show’s acting, story and direction are much better than it has been in years and seeing other sides of the characters has revived our long flagging interest in the series.

Say Yes to the Dress?

A quick plug – if you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my guest post on my good friend Annie Petersen’s blog: Towards a Unified Theory of Beard Acting. Annie’s blog (Celebrity Gossip: Academic Style) is pretty awesome, and she writes about celebrity gossip (and celebrity, more generally) in the 21st Century.

So far, I’ve mostly talked about shows that I watch with my wife that I don’t mind watching. For the most part, they’re pretty harmless. They neither offend, nor do they inspire me. But I haven’t mentioned my wife’s favourite TLC shows, What Not to Wear and Say Yes to the Dress, neither of which I like.

I’ll get to What not to Wear in a later post. Say Yes to the Dress is popular in the house because a) it’s short (22 minutes) and b) it’s available on-demand making it the perfect lunchtime viewing.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, the show is basically about 3(ish) brides as they try and fit their ideal wedding dresses and the drama in front and behind the scenes. We are led through the experience by our helpful experts as they attempt to navigate what my wife says is an incredibly emotional experience.

Say Yes to the Dress also focuses on situations that are inherently dramatic. Like any good documentary, the event is supercharged with family drama, uncertainty and a character (a bride) who ultimately asks a narrative question  – will she or won’t she find it?

All of this works for a pretty effective, compact viewing experience.

The show is also totally split along gender lines of a particular sort. It’s about weddings, particular kinds of women and the build-up to what the show presents as the most important moment of their lives. More than this, everyone is looking for the perfect dress, which often brings out the best and worst in people.

(poor, beleaguered staff…)

Maybe this is part of the reason that I don’t get it. I feel like the show provides my wife the opportunity to relive and revisit some of the emotions leading up to her own wedding and project her own emotions onto the participants on the show. Her personal experience becomes a constant reference point and place to compare with what she’s viewing.

For instance, when an overbearing grandmother attends the fittings, as occurs in this episode, she might say that I don’t understand what a vulnerable position that a potential dress wearer feels along with the exposure of being judged.

(note – this is nothing like my wife’s family)

Another constant on the show is when potential grooms show up to lend their “expertise.” At these times, she’ll look to me and say “I’m so glad that you weren’t there.”

I can’t help but agreeing. But occasionally, as with all the fashion-y shows that we watch together, I occasionally offer some terrible opinion of roucheing and other words I have never used before.

What’s interesting to me about the show is it seems to be an example of the self-generating franchise on Reality TV. Not only has it spawned a spin-off (Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta), but the cabal of TLC “stars” stop by to engage in cross-promotion. Just like that time when Michelle Duggar and the family stop by Kleinfeld’s.

Which brings me to 2 final points.

1) No matter what happens within the episode, no matter how horrible the people are to each other, and no matter how awful these people treat the staff, the emotional result of the ending is always the same.

There is always images of at least one wedding that packs an emotional wallop, and contains the show’s happy ending.

2) As we finish our lunch and the show winds down, my wife will turn to me and inevitably say something about wanting to redo our wedding all over again.

(I think that this implies a bigger budget. This doesn’t bother me.)

I wonder if other women feel the same way and whether the wedding is an event through which they compare other moments in their lives to.

This seems to be what happens with my wife, as she uses the show to negotiate her own life, happiness and scope of the wedding as a reference to the lives, happinesses and scale of the would-be brides in the show.

My theory is that all Reality TV works like this to some degree, as we measure the amount of talent, beauty, or perhaps incompetence against our own self-image. But this is definitely material for another post.

You Must Meet My Wife

She lightens my sadness,
She livens my days,
She bursts with a kind of madness
My well-ordered ways…

One thousand whims to which I give in,
Since her smallest tear turns me ashen.
I never dreamed that I could live in
So completely demented, contented a fashion.

- Steven Sondheim, “You Must Meet My Wife” from A Little Night Music

This picture is meant to be ironic...

So I realized the other day that my original intention for starting this blog was not just to put down my thoughts about TV but to try to watch TV through someone else’s viewpoint. Not only was this supposed to mean watching my wife’s shows with her and telling you what I think, but watching with someone whose thoughts and feelings are very different than mine and reporting what they think.

The blog was always meant as both a tribute to my wife and an experiment for me. Today, I’m going to try an communicate the ways in which she inspires my work more generally and this blog in particular.  I also haven’t conveyed how central her opinions, her emotions and the investments in her TV habits are to this larger project as I watch her watching stuff.

So without further ado…

Meeting My Wife

(Also meant to be ironic...)

So introductions. Obviously I’m going to say that my wife is the most amazing person I know. She’s a talented actress, she’s super-smart and more than a match for my ambitions and idiosyncrasies.

We talk about deep stuff – religion, politics, the purpose of art – what’s wrong with the world and what’s right with it, what we want to do with our lives when we grow up.  You know, the usual.

She puts up with my terrible jokes, which is more than you can ask from any partner.

My wife is also a very strong, independent woman. She’s very pragmatic, stoic and level-headed in everyday life. Which is one of the reasons that I find her reactions to TV so fascinating, as it often brings out the opposite reactions in her.

Watching With My Wife

One of my great joys in life is sharing the experience of  watching anything (plays, movies, tv) with my wife.

On our first date, we went to see a play together. Occasionally, during the performance, I would glimpse over to look at her. In her face, I could see my wife experiencing every emotion the characters projected. Not only was she emoting with them but was seemingly feeling their heartbreak on the stage. At these moments, tears ran down her face. I found out later that these reactions were not unique to this particular play, but happens when she watches anything.

This is another way of saying that she cries a lot, but she cries in all the right places.

She cries at the moments when the artist wants her to, in the parts where every fiber of their craft works toward the explicit goal of moving someone to tears. She cries when she sees people suffering on TV. She cries when she sees people overcome adversity. She cries when she sees people happy.

She feels in ways that I don’t. Things move her in different ways than me. Most of all, watching with my wife is such a pleasure because it reveals to me just how big her heart is. In my opinion, this is one of her best qualities and often I am moved simply by how much she is moved.

My Wife is the Ideal Spectator

When Oprah cries, we cry...

More than anything else, I think that this makes my wife the ideal audience member. Hopefully, this is a far cry from saying that my wife is a sucker. What I want to say is that she is the perfect person to watch while watching TV, because I think she is the ideal person that creative people had in mind when designing these shows.

Certainly this is another way of saying that she is part of the demographic that these shows are meant to appeal to, and by proxy, the kind of woman that is meant to be moved by these works.

So, when she cries watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, or Say Yes to the Dress or at the end of Modern Family it’s not simply because she’s a sucker, but because its the show’s purpose to move her and people like her.

Where we go from here…

So let’s call my first week of postings a warm-up to better and (presumably) deeper things to come. Ultimately, I want to be asking why and how these shows and movies are playing into gendered assumptions of TV viewing, and why they work so effectively. I’m hoping that this blog raises some questions about pleasures of watching TV as a couple, as an individual and as a man watching what are presumably marketed as women’s shows.

Finally, I want to try to find the in-between places, where my wife and I are moved equally by what we watch and find the moments where gendered spectatorship break down. I assume that this project is more universal than specific. That more than just my family unit watch Oprah as a family and that there is productive stuff in between where all of us can find some common ground.