What You Should Have Watched #15

Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a strange addiction, but I do tend to go through withdrawal if I don’t watch TV regularly.

To give you an idea of how much TV I WANT to watch versus how much I’m ABLE to watch, check this out: according to my DVR, I have 67 series scheduled to record throughout the year. Of those, 11 are for my kids, but I’ll watch probably half of those (Phineas and Ferb, Ultimate Spider-Man, etc.). Currently, my DVR is 51% full with 95 recordings. Of those 95 recordings, 45 of them belong to my kids. Whereas I delete my shows after I’m done watching them, my kids like to watch their stuff over and over and over, so I keep it up there until I need more space. I haven’t had to delete any of their recordings since switching from Comcast service to AT&T U-Verse.

I enjoy almost every type of show except for most reality shows. I say most because one of my favorite shows right now is Drinking Made Easy on HDNet. I also enjoy sitcoms (Community, New Girl, Happy Endings, etc.), cop dramas…with a twist (Castle, Psych, White Collar, etc.), horror (Walking Dead, Supernatural), and even period pieces and fantasy shows (Boardwalk Empire, Spartacus, Game of Thrones).

There are some actors I’ll follow to anything they do. Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, and just about anybody who has ever worked with Joss Whedon (although I gave up on Ringer halfway through the first episode). Peter Dinklage won me over with Death at a Funeral (the original) and Threshold. Also, I loves me some pretty ladies.

There are also a few web series that I enjoy. Right now I’ve got a pretty big crush on Felicia Day, and I’m thoroughly enjoying The Guild and The Flog, and I’ll be checking out the shows on “Geek and Sundry” as they appear. I also watch Epic Meal Time every week. One of these days…ONE OF THESE DAYS…I’m going to make one of their dishes.

If you couldn’t tell, I love my DVR. After putting the kids to bed each night and cleaning up from dinner and getting stuff ready for the next day, I only get about an hour or so to watch TV before I fall asleep. I like to watch the sitcoms first; I feel like I accomplish more if I watch three shows instead of just one. Then I’ll move on to the one-hour dramas, focusing on the must-sees: Castle, Fringe, Game of Thrones. Some stuff, no matter how awesome it is, can wait until the entire season has finished. That’s what I did with Justified, Southland, and Alcatraz this season.

As much as I love watching TV, I’m seriously considering doing something drastic. Things at work are getting a bit uncertain, so I’m thinking of cancelling my U-Verse subscription. I’d keep my Internet, I’m not totally crazy, but there are enough options out there that this wouldn’t affect me TOO much. I’ve got a Netflix account, and I’ve got a Wii in the living room and an X-Box in my bedroom (my bedroom TV has a Netflix app, so I’ve got a back-up if something happens to the X-Box), so there’s an option. The downside to that is that there’s a pretty decent delay between the time a season wraps to when it’s available to stream. With my viewing habits of a couple of shows this season, though, I’m apparently becoming a bit more comfortable with that. This would be how I catch my premium cable shows. I’d just have to make sure to stay away from spoilers. I’d also end up getting a Hulu+ subscription, something that can also be streamed through the Wii and X-Box. I had it when it was first available on the X-Box, but it really didn’t offer enough to keep me with it past the free trial. If I don’t have a cable subscription, this is how I’d catch my major network shows. Should I do this, I’d also consider an Amazon Prime account. I’d be able to use it on my X-Box, but not the Wii in the living room.

One thing you should expect from this blog is up-to-the-minute TV news. I might share awesome happenings (like whenever an announcement about the new season of Arrested Development is made), but chances are you’ll be able to find it earlier at an actual entertainment news blog. If you’d like a recommendation, I check Warming Glow daily. It’s got a very sarcastic tone to it, but the writers really care about good television. It’s the first blog I check each day.

As this ends, I just realized that I haven’t given you a taste of what I watch. Here’s a bit of a sampling: Anything by Joss Whedon, anything by Aaron Sorkin, Game of Thrones, Californication, Shameless, Family Guy, How I Met Your Mother, Castle, Psych, White Collar, Mad Men, Community, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Modern Family, Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apt. 23, Happy Endings, Cougar Town, Person of Interest, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, Louie, Archer, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Drinking Made Easy, Spartacus, Magic Town.

That’s certainly not everything I watch, but it’s a huge chunk of it.