TV Squad

• Things I Hate About TV: ABC's Lost previews
  

  Filed under: Other Drama Shows, ABC, OpEd, Lost, Things I Hate About TV

  Whoever creates the promos for Lost needs to start coordinating things with the show's writers, or at least start watching the show. The last few Lost previews have made so many empty promises that I am considering hitting the Mute button on my remote when the ads come on. It should not be possible to over-dramatize the events on a show about plane crash survivors on a bizarre island, but ABC has achieved that feat.

  Consider the commercials for last week's episode, "Stranger in a Strange Land." Viewers were told...
  




• Things I Hate about TV: People who claim not to watch it
  

  Filed under: OpEd, Things I Hate About TV, Watercooler Talk

  (Writers Note: This post is not about something I hate ON the television, it's about a particular type of person I hate that is caused by the existence of television. It was hard picking a category for it, so I went with the one I did.)
  
  I was an English major in college. If you ever get the chance to be an English major, do it! It opens so many doors to your future: with your English degree you can teach English! Or, also, starve!
  
  Being an English...
  



• Things I Hate About TV: "At the end of the day..."
  

  Filed under: Sports, OpEd, TV Sports, Things I Hate About TV

  As a red-blooded American male who has trouble relating to his father, I watch a lot of sports. That means I also watch a lot of sports related television. PTI, Around the Horn, Inside the NFL, The Sports Reporters, NFL Live, NFL Prime Time, Sportscenter, and even Jim Rome is Burning (but only when my wife is out of earshot - for some reason the sound of Rome's voice makes my wife very angry. She doesn't follow sports; I think it's just a gut reaction to smugness.) Thanks to TiVo, I watch them all, fast-forwarding past...
  



• Things I Hate About TV: Workaholics in Christmas specials
  

  Filed under: OpEd, Things I Hate About TV, Watercooler Talk, Festivus, TNT

  I had trouble sleeping the other night (there were sugar plums dancing through my head - angry, murderous sugar plums), so I turned to the best TV option I had available to me: TNT HD's replay of A Perfect Day starring Rob Lowe.
  
  Here's the plot: lower middle class guy writes a book that becomes a best seller. As he climbs the economic ladder, he becomes a workaholic and is thus estranged from his family. A mysterious stranger then appears and...
  



• Things I Hate About TV: Blowing news stories out of proportion
  

  Filed under: News, OpEd, Things I Hate About TV, Watercooler Talk

  Three mountain climbers go up on Mt. Hood. They get in trouble, socked in by a storm. They call for help. There's a search party. One's found dead; the others are still missing.
  
  Don't get me wrong; it's a sad story. I feel for the families of the men trapped on the mountain. But this doesn't feel like news to me.
  
  Since climbing during any time of the year, much less winter, isn't exactly a risk-free activity, I'd imagine that one or two climbers get trapped on the mountain every year. So why has...
  



• Things I Hate About TV: The woo-hoo
  

  Filed under: Programming, OpEd, Things I Hate About TV

  I've never been much a joiner. I wasn't on any sports teams in high school and I don't belong to many clubs or organizations. But I would join The Nancy Grace Fan Club and proudly wear their pin on my lapel before I ever "woo-hooed." (I think I've done it a couple of times in print, but only in a comical way.)

  The woo-hoo. It's everywhere. It's not enough that Al Roker is standing in front of a crowd outside of The Today Show, the crowd actually has to do that long "wooooooooo-hoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" every time the camera is even remotely...
  




• Things I Hate About TV: Promise rings
  

  Filed under: Other Reality Shows, ABC, OpEd, Things I Hate About TV

  My wife made me tune into the big finale of ABC's The Bachelor last night. I tried desperately to talk her out of it (something about the resulting dip in testosterone from being exposed to the show might harm our chances at conceiving), but she persisted.
  
  Like Jesse Palmer, and (inexplicably popular) Bob Guiney before him, last night's "Prince" Lorenzo (a man who has less claim to actually being a prince than the musician Prince does) decided to opt out of going through with proposing to his choice. He did give her...
  



• Things I Hate About TV: When Stewart and Colbert are on vacation
  

  Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, OpEd, The Daily Show, Things I Hate About TV, The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, Talk Show

  Don't get me wrong... I think everyone is entitled to a vacation, especially the hard-working folks at the comedy factories known as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. But it sucks when I tune into Comedy Central to get my late night fix and I see reruns. This is the situation I'll find myself in this week, as both shows are on vacation.
  
  I can tell right away that TDS is...
  



• Things I Hate About TV: Weather teasers
  

  Filed under: News, OpEd, Things I Hate About TV

  I don't know if it's the same in other local markets, but here in the Twin Cities promos for the upcoming local news broadcasts always include some teaser about the weather forecast that goes something like this:

  Anchor:Just how cold is it going to get? And will we see any snow over the weekend? Tune in at ten and find out.

  I can understand doing such a teaser if the station has an exclusive story or just scooped some recent event that none of the other stations have, but it's not like they're the only place where you can get weather...
  




• Things I Hate About TV: It's just like a movie!
  

  Filed under: Programming, OpEd, Things I Hate About TV

  I hate it when a network, a star, or a producer refers to a TV show that "looks like a movie." Is this supposed to impress me? I don't really care if a TV show "looks like a movie," because I look for the actual content of the show (writing, stars, direction, etc) before I look at how it looks. Give me a good script that looks terrible and I'll take it over a formula show that looks fantastic any day.
  
  Take Smith. The network (and more than a few TV critics and fans) kept saying it looked...