Looking For Mr. Good Show

Three's Company. Yes, I used to watch this crap.

I was flipping around the channels last Saturday evening and I came across Saturday Night Live. Not the terribly unfunny current SNL, but an earlier, even less funny version that NBC was airing during prime time. It was from 1986 and I found it particularly dull. I admit that I didn't watch it for more than fifteen minutes, but in those fifteen minutes I did not laugh once. I didn't chuckle, I didn't smile, I didn't even smirk. I have also seen reruns of SNL with the original cast from the 1970's, and I had to ask myself, what the hell was it that we thought was so funny back then? And it's not just SNL. I remember watching shows like Hee Haw, Three's Company, and The Dukes of Hazard. They all sucked big time, yet I sat there and watched those shows along with a whole bunch of other crap. Don't get me wrong, there are some shows that have held up over the years. The Mary Tyler Moore Show and the Bob Newhart Show to name two. But for every one good show there were hours of dreck. So why did I watch all that crap? Because Chicago did not have cable television where I lived until 1989. We had three networks to chose from, one independent channel, one PBS channel, and a few UHF channels that were either in Spanish or ran nothing but reruns of all the old, crappy shows from the "Golden Age" of television. Now things are different. I have cable. I have access to a few hundred channels, so that means I have access to a whole lot of good television watching, except that I do not. On any given night, on our bedroom television, Mark is watching some of the worst, most banal crap imaginable. Most of it on the Bravo Channel. And with all those channels to chose from I still have to dig to find decent viewing choices. There are some nights it takes me over an half hour to go through the guide looking for something to watch. On Sunday the Golden Globes gave out the prize for the best comedy television series, to something called Transparent. Fine, so where will I be able to watch that Golden Globe winning show? Not on any cable channel that I already pay for, not on Netflix that I already pay for. No, Transparent can only be watched on something called Amazon Prime Television, which you have to pay for in addition to your cable bill, Netflix bill, and....    goddamnsonofabitchbastards!