Good Frelling Television

Stepped on the scale this morning, and I’m up six pounds from last week.

Fucking shit.

How do I manage to fluctuate this much weight from week to week? Maybe it’s water weight. Maybe it’s because I ate a late dinner. Maybe it was the fondue orgy at Mariah’s, two dinners out with dessert, two lunches out at work, and Gelati Celesti Cake Batter ice cream (just a toddler size!). Yeah, whoops. I guess this is why I was having a hard time running on Friday. I was lugging all this extra poundage around.

Operation Skinny Bitch: Fat Con Level One Alert.

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For Christmas my beloved gave me the entire first season of Farscape on DVD, and last night over dinner, we watched an episode. Man, what a damn fine show Farscpae is (was). I got all nostalgic, harkening back to Friday nights spent in eager anticipation of the newest episode. Our friends knew better than to ask us to go anywhere before 10 p.m. When the Sci-Fi channel stupidly cancelled Farscape at the end of its fourth season, we felt like a good friend had died.

Which leads me to the mysterious Amos Television Show Curse. It started with Twin Peaks in high school. I loved Twin Peaks. Never missed an episode. I even learned the theme song for a piano recital. Granted the last season did degenerate into stupid weirdness (unlike the brilliant Lynchian weirdness of the first two seasons), so its death was not quite as brutal. But I did lose an excellent show after only two years. Then there was My So-Called Life. Gone. Poof. After only watching three episodes.

Since being married, Adrian seems to have doubled my show killing powers. We are racking up an impressive tally of TV shows that are killed as soon as we take a vested interest in them. While the Whore of Babylon that is Reality Television continues to spawn infinite varieties of her demon children, well-conceived shows with compelling writing and credible acting get axed by network suits. Or it is because of some sort of mystical curse that has been placed on my viewing habits?

Witness for your consideration:
• News Radio: Not only was this workplace sitcom witty with a dash of quirk, but the cast was awesome. Phil Hartman, pre-ER Maura Tierney, Milton, Dave Foley. Even Andy Dick was tolerable. It had the unfortunate luck of falling on our radar. Well, then Phil Hartman died. Show went kablooey not long after both occurred.
• Freaks and Geeks: We enjoyed two episodes of this pure television genius before the show was viciously mowed down in the midst of its first season.
• Boomtown: While not perfect, the show had an intriguing format and really fine actors (BOB cast reunion and Bubba Gump!). We enjoyed getting into the characters throughout the first season and were looking forward to the promises held in the second, when NBC once again cut down a perfectly fine show.
• Dead Like Me: This show first caught our attention on DVD, and we rabidly consumed the first season. Mandy Patinkin was worth the rental fee alone. For the brief period when we returned to the Temple of the Cable God, we got to watch the entire second season On Demand. Then Showtime cancelled DLM right when the cast chemistry was gelling and characters were developing down interesting paths. But considering the number of loose ends tied up in the last few episodes, the producers must have seen the writing on the wall.
• Farscape: AKA The Greatest Television Travesty Known to Man. I could write bushels of blogs on this one. Leaps and bounds above any current sci-fi (or previous, I think) show. Then the suits at the Sci Fi channel went retard and axed the brilliant show without warning at the end of a season with a cliffhanger. God bless the Scapers who spent two years working to bring the miniseries to life. It was a relief to have those loose ends tied up, but it will never replace season five nor any subsequent seasons that could have been. But we did have four awesome seasons, and for that I am thankful.

Of course there are those shows that have managed to thwart our powers and go on to become TV juggernauts, still plugging happily along like ER, Law and Order, and Trading Spaces. The X-Files got a little long in the tooth and could be cancelled a season earlier. Looks like enough people have hitched themselves to the Lost and Desperate Housewives bandwagon that we’re safe for at least two seasons for both of those shows.

But still, we are weary of involving ourselves in a new show only to see it dashed onto the rocks. We even stopped recommending shows to people. One of our friends suggested we should hire ourselves out to networks looking to squash a popular show. We’ll be like TV voodoo priests.

Does this mean if we start watching Alias it will go away?

P.S. The nail clipping came early today. 7:45 a.m.