What's Hopper Been Watching?

Well, since we’ve become a nation of tube junkies due to the varying degrees of lockdown enforcement, my teevee watching has probably doubled if not tripled. Pre-Covid I might have watched two or three shows with any regularity. Most of my viewing was movies and sports – baseball and football primarily, though the wife and I got into English premier league soccer last year, due in no small part to Patch, the up-and-coming fútbol player in the family.

Since professional sports are now “woke,” I don’t watch ’em. That clears up 3-6 hours a week. But now as a family, much to my chagrin, we all gather round to worship the idiot box for 2-3 hours a night. Much as I hate it, it is an addiction. And, dammit, I’m going to have to go cold-turkey rogue to overcome it. More thoughts on that later.

But let’s skip on the heavy stuff for the moment. What have we been watching? Last I checked in on this topic was April, when the initial lockdown was in full swing. Hmm. Let’s see. There’s been a lot of viewing, and a lot of it kinda blurs into meaninglessness.

I don’t have the photographic memory for teevee shows that I do for books, so let me wing this. In no particular order, then:

A second go-round with The Office, from season 3 to 9, because the girls love it.

Designated Survivor, with Kiefer Sutherland, a kind of cross between 24 and The West Wing, first two seasons. (I stopped when it because too left-wing.)

All six seasons of Arrested Development (1-4 absolutely hilarious; 5-6 were a mistake). We’re currently re-watching it, nearing the end of Season One.

Netflix specials on Epstein and Rudy taking down the New York mob.

The Netflix special on the brutal murders done by Chris Watts out in Colorado in 2018.

Various horror flicks with the little ones: Doctor Sleep, The Amityville Horror, Carrie, Phantasm, Event Horizon, Phantoms, Fright Night (both original and poorer remake), The Blair Witch Project, The Bat, and Dementia 13. Mostly with 16-year-old Little One, the gentler funner ones with 12-year-old Patch. None with the wife, who isn’t a horror / SF aficionado.

The Impractical Jokers Dinner Party has been a hit with us, proving that those four guys still have it after eight years. Bring back the regular format!

And our latest binge, The Blacklist, where we are somewhere in the middle of Season Three.

With increased watching, there were an increased amount of duds watched:

Half an episode of Steve Carrell’s Space Force – terribly unfunny.

Tried The Haunting of Hill House but couldn’t get past episode one due to the lesbianism. The Witcher was way too post-modern for a medieval-ish series. The Viking themed The Last Kingdom was a little too violent for violence’s sake.

Thought Russell Crowe’s campy Unhinged might be a fun flick to watch with the girls. It started out decently, but then veered sharply into stupidity.

Patch watches a lot of the anime sci fi shows, and I watched a couple with her. The wife watched The Boys, but I passed as I’ve been over the whole comic book stuff fifteen years ago. Little One watches a whole host of SVU and CSI themed shows that I joke she’s on track to be either an FBI profiler or a coroner in some big city morgue.

Of course, since Thanksgiving, the wife has wrangled the girls into a bunch of Hallmark Christmas movies. I lay in the corner of the living room perusing whatever current nonfiction I’m into, pausing to crack a joke here and there as the movie allows.

When I’m alone, I usually watch something out of left field if I can (something like, say, the phenomenal Ingmar Bergman on one side of the spectrum to the cheesy badness of The Cloverfield Paradox on the other). I tape the more intellectual astrophysics shows I can find (usually Nova) and some of the WW2 documentaries on the various History channels. I’m also lobbying the girls to watch Tom Hanks’s WW2 Battle of the Atlantic flick Greyhound, with me, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Oh well. I’ve still managed to put away 53 books so far this year plus start writing two new novels, so it’s not that the lovecraftian eldritch octopus optical monster in our living room has completely possessed me.

Only partially.