WannaBeGeekGirl's Journal: Rant: TV show quality/ hollywood babies and politics

McWaaaaaaaaah! I've McHad it with Grey's Anatomy. It was a decent show with potential. By decent I mean I could throw in the DVD, watch some episodes and be entertained more than disappointed. As for potential, well, that was mainly in the choice of some fairly unknown actors, a medical drama/comedy/romance that wasn't so low-brow that I wanted to gouge my eyes out, like Scrubs. No, Grey's wasn't a medical thriller by far, IMHO, it had too many people sleeping around. There were way too many times that protocol and red tape was convienently dodged in favor of ratings. I'll be honest, I thought the first several episodes blew goats, stuck with it because I'm a huge Katherine Heigl fan (yes I loved Roswell). But some of the other cast kept me interested.

Enter the drama with an intolerance incident that the network, the show's PR firm, and no one really addressed and I had enough. In case you missed the scoop, here's an article summing up one side of it. Normally I don't give a %$#% about Hollywood whining. This involved intolerance though. Not just once, but pattern intolerance, as Washinton made the same slur backstage at an award show. (Yes I watched those, Hugh Laurie was up for an award!!!) I can not stand intolerance. The press made a big hoodoo about it. Supposedly he went to intolerance rehab and everything was ok. Then his contract wasn't reknewed. The producer said, its none of the viewer's business why not. Washington appeared in an interview saying he had no hard feelings. A few weeks later he's suing on these pretenses. When it comes down to greed, I'm out. I don't know the motives. I do know that the network needs to handle PR better. I wasn't really a network watcher...didn't do much for their ratings, I prefer waiting for DVDs. I do know this--fans of a Golden Globe winning series will get upset if they just fire a major character with no statement about it. It doesn't matter who's side I take, thats crap.


Finally. I think Thursday NBC aired the last of the cancelled episode footage of the f*cking brilliant Studio60 series. It of course left its loyal audience hanging forever with a plot better written than most cable series and frankly, a lot of big budget movies. I'd like to take this time to give NBC my middle finger and my top hole. Since they "cancelled the series due to ratings" I've loyally boycotted Heroes. That show looked really cool, and starred at least two actors I really like. I boycotted it though. I'm waiting for the DVDs but the spoilers are pretty much unavoidable. ~scorn~

NBC, you didn't cancel Studio60 because of ratings. Thats about as true as the crap we were fed about why the US invaded Iraq. Anyone who watched the S60 episodes convienently pushed waaaaaay back, and holding up the contract until there was no chance the show could return can put that together. ..|.. you! I won't EVER watch your network again. I will Tivo, I will wait for DVDs, I will give up my Leno headlines that used to make me laugh and feel better than any anti-depressant. I don't care if there is a tornado and your local affiliate is the only station available, I'll risk it. You guys caved to pressure on a show that rocked and was unapologeticly brilliant, patriotic and what America should have been able to watch on tv, for your own political agenda. I'm so glad West Wing didn't get smothered under your panzy asses the same way.


Gosh I feel better. /. is going to know my cycle pretty soon too, by the schedule of my rants I think, if I don't start being careful.

Of Ratings...

[Shadow Wrought]

A friend of mine, who is a true Geek's Geek, once received a ratings diary. So he sat down with the TV guide for the week he was to be keeping track and dutifully recorded that he had watched every single SciFi show that he could find;-) Every time I think of the Nielson's and the 1 Nielson household = 100,000 viewers, I wonder how these people are selected? What if they're prats? Or humorless personality-free zones? Its enough to make one shudder, it is.

Then again, i remember that the purpose of TV

Re:

[WannaBeGeekGirl]

I wonder how these people are selected? What if they're prats? Or humorless personality-free zones? Its enough to make one shudder, it is.

I wonder too. In fact, I wonder about all the surveys I see referenced in the media. There are literally so many of them, that you would think I would have been asked to participate in at least one. I'm one of the few people that kept a land line until 9 months ago. I can't think of any one quality about my lifestyle that would uninterest every single marketing demographric. ~shrug~ Still, yes, I work with a company of about 1200 folks at our local branch and 900 of us are coders. At the coding al

Potential...

[johndiii]

There's the occasional thing that does live up to the potential. Something like Planet Earth, that aired back in April on the Discovery channel. That was the last thing I watched - at least that I remember watching. :-) I watch very little television. Some DVDs, though.

But television is much like anything else - most of it is not worth your time. The thing is that you have to watch what is on, or watch nothing. DVDs help with that, as do DVRs. Although there's so little worth watching that I rarely e

Surveys are slanted

[Engineer-Poet]

I wonder about all the surveys I see referenced in the media. There are literally so many of them, that you would think I would have been asked to participate in at least one.

I've been called by phone pollers several times. I finally got tired of it and refused to talk to pollsters.

I think ratings are something invented as an excuse for networks to allow dumbed down programming to the masses.

I think it's worse than that: many polls are designed to produce the result desired by the organization paying f

Going without tv for years

[WannaBeGeekGirl]

It's stuff like this which explains why I haven't had a TV for the last year (the one I own is 5 states away).

Ok, you're one of two people I've met that has no tv. I find this interesting. Except for my freshman year of college, I've always had a tv in my living space. But, in 2003 I turned my tv off. I even canceled the cable and it didn't get turned on again until 2005 by my relatives that were staying with me while I had surgery over the summer. I didn't start watching again until late 2006, unless you count going over to a friend's house a few times when he showed some DVDs.

People at work, other than

OTOH, I DO pay for cable....

[Engineer-Poet]

... but it just runs my "landline" and Internet. No TV. ;-)

You brew beer? I used to do that, but got out of the habit and sold/gave my gear away.

Re:I do pay for cable too; brewing [root] beer

[WannaBeGeekGirl]

... but it just runs my "landline" and Internet. No TV. ;-)

You brew beer? I used to do that, but got out of the habit and sold/gave my gear away.

Good semantical catch on the cable point. Yes, I pay for the cable for the modem, Comca$h has me by the figurative balls on that one. The landline was not through the cable though, I actually had a choice and used the littler guy.

I quit brewing beer, except for root beer when I quit drinking (beyond tastings) because of my depression. Depressants didn't mix with the disease. I am quite a root beer lover, though I left the old style gear in a friend's basement when I bought a fancy, smaller system

Tried diet ginger ale?

[Engineer-Poet]

Something I learned by experiment: yeast does not metabolize Aspartame! So long as you don't heat it long enough to hydrolyze it, you can use it as a sweetener and add just enough sugar for natural carbonation. This allows you to make a home-made diet soft drink.

"Bottle bombs" have long been a known hazard of homebrewing. Whether the cap blows or the glass breaks depends on the particulars. When brewing naturally-sweetened root beer or ginger ale, I keep seeing directions to "drink within 3 days of bot

Re:

[WannaBeGeekGirl]

"Bottle bombs" have long been a known hazard of homebrewing. Whether the cap blows or the glass breaks depends on the particulars.

Holy crap! You mean glass breaking is normal when sweetners are used?!? Wow. My first batch of root beer in bottles had a few caps blow, but nothing worse than regular beer problems. I do use ale yeast for root beer carbonation, and come to think of it as soon as its ready, it gets put in my fridge or friend's fridges if they want some well within the 3 days. Except I have tried some recipes with champagne yeast where the recipe suggested leaving it bottled longer than three days. I lost a few bott

Re:

[Engineer-Poet]

You mean glass breaking is normal when sweetners are used?!?

If there's enough sugar in the brew to feed the yeast well past the bottle's pressure limit (and the yeast isn't a strain which is forced into dormancy by the CO2 concentration), yes, it's "normal". Yeast does what yeast will do, and the rest is physics.

Most beer is fully converted before it's bottled. The dose of priming sugar is set to carbonate it to just the right level, and then the yeast runs out of food. If you want to have plenty of su

brewing mead

[WannaBeGeekGirl]

I've been thinking about making a sweet mead for ages, but I understand they can take months to ferment. On top of this, I'm all out of gumption. I guess the 5 pounds of honey I got at Costco is just going to sit there instead.

Hmmm...'all out of gumption'. As in you don't want to find equipment to make the stuff, you don't want to deal with making the stuff or you don't want to wait for the mead to age or some combo?

Making ends mead

[Engineer-Poet]

As in, I'm multiple states away from most of my kitchen stuff (like my brew kettle), I haven't got any really good idea of what I want (straight honey flavor or something more interesting?), how to go about it, and I always seem to have something else to do with my time.