How I spent my summer vacation (from TV blogging), and my plans for fall
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- September
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Summer’s over, and school is back in session.
Well, not school so much as TV blogging, which I took an unexpected hiatus from doing about a month ago. 
But things seem to be settling down and I’m ready to get back into a rhythm of watching, recapping and generally rambling about the shows I like watching most.
At least that’s how it starts out. Why blog about shows you don’t like, right? Well, you don’t plan on a 30 Rock to turn stale in its third season after two spectacular ones, and you don’t expect a Parks and Recreation to be so uneven despite a solid pedigree. You sure don’t expect NBC to keep milking Heroes long after every viewer and half the cast seemed to stop caring.
No, no one makes me stick with shows that I no longer have the passion for, but it’s hard to give up on a show. That said, taking a few weeks off before a new season allows me to do a reset. And here’s how my blog-sponsibilities shape up for the immediate future.
Curb Your Enthusiasm returns for a seventh season on Sunday, Sept. 20. And since Larry David has never to my knowledge been involved with a bad episode of television, I’ll be right there for every Susie Essman F-bomb.
Chuck is my Monday night mainstay, but it’s slated for a March debut because NBC is stupid has other plans for that night. Still, I have about five more episodes in my Season 1 Look-Back to recap thanks to my recent hiatus, so I may begin filling the gap with that. Might not have enough weeks to plow through Season 2 before the show returns, but who knows?
Thursday night means The Office, and season 6, which debuts Sept. 17, means a Jim-Pam wedding and a smirky-faced bambino on the way. The Office is why I watch TV at all — until 2005, practically all I watched was the news and the Mets — and it’s why I blog. The show has drifted further and further from Season 2, chronologically and in spirit. But I’m a Dunder-Mifflinite for the long haul. Why? It’s nebulose.
Thursday also means Community, the new Joel McHale comedy that looks pretty hilarious. It also starts Sept. 17. I plan to give that a gander. If it’s as good as its pilot, I’ll stick with it.
But Thursdays have been a pretty hectic night for me. Actually, Fridays were really hectic as I tried to recap three shows from the night before. I don’t plan on doing that anymore. Which leads me to: Shows I No Longer Plan to Blog About.
Heroes — Seriously, was I the only one watching last season? It is so far off the rails I don’t believe it can recover, no matter how many mid-season corretions. Kristen Bell was a great addition, for example, so naturally they killed her off. The new Nathan is the old Sylar? No thanks.
Parks and Recreation — I’ll keep watching Amy Poehler’s show about a misfit municipal official, and I’ll comment on it occasionally. But I can’t dedicate time and blog space to it anymore. The funniest characters were minor ones: Chris Pratt as Rashida Jones’s boyfriend and Nick Offerman’s parks department boss. I don’t expect Jones to be funny, but when Aziz Ansari isn’t making me laugh, something is very wrong.
30 Rock — Jack’s daddy issues and Liz’s boyfriend/baby issues sucked the life out of me. If not for Tracy Morgan, Jack McBrayer, Jane Krakowski and all the minor characters who get too little screen time, I’d have given up sooner. Again, I’ll keep watching, because this show is still the funniest on TV. But in trying to make it a show worth caring about, they’ve made me stop caring about it.
(Photo Derek Davis/The Journal News)
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 1:14 pm by Brian Howard.
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Brian,
I am giving “Heroes” one final chance, but they have about 15 minutes of the season opener to convince me. I keep hoping “Parks and Recreation” will have a Season 2 takeoff like “The Office” did. I don’t want to live in a world where Greg Daniels and Mike Schur make a crappy show.
I’m with you, DC. I want to like it, but it shouldn’t be work. Then again, I may be becoming a sitcom snob.