Waiting for Jack to Get the Comfy Chair
Confession: I'm a TV addict. I grew up watching TV basically from when I got home to when I went to bed (I always could do my homework in class). For one glorious half-year in third grade, the school in our rapidly growing suburb was overcrowded and everyone went to class half-days until the new school was built; I got to watch game shows all morning and mosey over to school after lunch. How I loved Match Game '77 and The Price is Right. I still know how much a four-door mid-sized sedan cost in the late seventies.
Like any ex-addict, I rail against the evil Demon Box at any opportunity. By every measure, television is terrible for children: studies have shown TV-watching leading to obesity, ADHD, low academic scores, behavioral problems, increased violent tendencies, child neglect, brain dysfunctions. Well, duh. I sneer in contempt at the feeble attempts of some of my fellow homeschoolers to excuse TV by naming a few so-called 'educational' programs that teach as much in one hour as a kid could get from five minutes of reading a book on the topic. Popping in a video ain't any different, either; don't kid yourself. It's still the leering, brain-damaging, sugar-and-gadget-hawking electronic pseudo-parent, sliding its tentacles into your Precious Offspring's ganglia. Ten years of No TV, and Offspring #1 fills her spare time with bike rides, books, paper dolls, chess, craft projects, playing with her buddy down the street, and learning to program in Perl. There's a television in our bedroom, for watching the World Series and our weekly Family Movie Night.
But when the last child is tucked into bed ... I did mention that I'm an addict, didn't I? Make that a hypocritical addict.
So anyway. I've been watching the latest season of 24, stealthily tape-delayed of course. Geraint Wyn Davies, the star of the unintentionally hilarious vampire-cop show Forever Knight (I can't put into words what's so funny about a vampire with a Canadian accent; just trust me), is apparently going to be in a recurring role, but I haven't figured out who he is yet. I need a good look at the uber-villain; might be him. The terrorists du jour this season are sort-of Russians, but really from "one of those breakaway Russian republics." Maybe Latvians. Certainly no one has said the word Chechen, and given last season, where Kiefer Sutherland had to show up in public service announcements in the middle of each episode assuring us that the network really didn't believe that all Moslems are terrorists after CAIR threw fits about the Islamic terrorist bad guys, I suspect Fox isn't planning to get anywhere near the faintest hint of a suggestion that, well, you know what.
This is what makes me think Geraint Wyn Davies would be such a good choice for Head Bad Guy. Fox has got to be thinking that the Welsh-Canadian Antw-Dwfwmytion League can be safely ignored.
After three episodes, Jack Bauer hasn't actually tortured anyone, though he's threatened to do it a couple of times: bonus points for aiming one of those threats at a fifteen-year-old. Perhaps the whole "torture for the sake of your country" thing is a little sensitive right now. He's still incredibly short; I really expected the villains, when a flushed-out Bauer showed himself, to say "Bozhe moy, I expected you to be taller." Perhaps to keep the contrast from being too embarassing, the latest head of CTU is Sam Gamgee, I mean Sean Astin, professional hobbit, who showed up in time to save the day in episode 3.
Episode 4 tonight!
Confession: I'm a TV addict. I grew up watching TV basically from when I got home to when I went to bed (I always could do my homework in class). For one glorious half-year in third grade, the school in our rapidly growing suburb was overcrowded and everyone went to class half-days until the new school was built; I got to watch game shows all morning and mosey over to school after lunch. How I loved Match Game '77 and The Price is Right. I still know how much a four-door mid-sized sedan cost in the late seventies.
Like any ex-addict, I rail against the evil Demon Box at any opportunity. By every measure, television is terrible for children: studies have shown TV-watching leading to obesity, ADHD, low academic scores, behavioral problems, increased violent tendencies, child neglect, brain dysfunctions. Well, duh. I sneer in contempt at the feeble attempts of some of my fellow homeschoolers to excuse TV by naming a few so-called 'educational' programs that teach as much in one hour as a kid could get from five minutes of reading a book on the topic. Popping in a video ain't any different, either; don't kid yourself. It's still the leering, brain-damaging, sugar-and-gadget-hawking electronic pseudo-parent, sliding its tentacles into your Precious Offspring's ganglia. Ten years of No TV, and Offspring #1 fills her spare time with bike rides, books, paper dolls, chess, craft projects, playing with her buddy down the street, and learning to program in Perl. There's a television in our bedroom, for watching the World Series and our weekly Family Movie Night.
But when the last child is tucked into bed ... I did mention that I'm an addict, didn't I? Make that a hypocritical addict.
So anyway. I've been watching the latest season of 24, stealthily tape-delayed of course. Geraint Wyn Davies, the star of the unintentionally hilarious vampire-cop show Forever Knight (I can't put into words what's so funny about a vampire with a Canadian accent; just trust me), is apparently going to be in a recurring role, but I haven't figured out who he is yet. I need a good look at the uber-villain; might be him. The terrorists du jour this season are sort-of Russians, but really from "one of those breakaway Russian republics." Maybe Latvians. Certainly no one has said the word Chechen, and given last season, where Kiefer Sutherland had to show up in public service announcements in the middle of each episode assuring us that the network really didn't believe that all Moslems are terrorists after CAIR threw fits about the Islamic terrorist bad guys, I suspect Fox isn't planning to get anywhere near the faintest hint of a suggestion that, well, you know what.
This is what makes me think Geraint Wyn Davies would be such a good choice for Head Bad Guy. Fox has got to be thinking that the Welsh-Canadian Antw-Dwfwmytion League can be safely ignored.
After three episodes, Jack Bauer hasn't actually tortured anyone, though he's threatened to do it a couple of times: bonus points for aiming one of those threats at a fifteen-year-old. Perhaps the whole "torture for the sake of your country" thing is a little sensitive right now. He's still incredibly short; I really expected the villains, when a flushed-out Bauer showed himself, to say "Bozhe moy, I expected you to be taller." Perhaps to keep the contrast from being too embarassing, the latest head of CTU is Sam Gamgee, I mean Sean Astin, professional hobbit, who showed up in time to save the day in episode 3.
Episode 4 tonight!
posted by The Opinionated Homeschooler at 7:01 AM
1 Comments:
Since you are already turing back to the dark side, make your transformation complete and pick up "Scrubs" on Tues. nights.
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