The last TV show I watched in real time was Seinfeld . . . I remember frenetic discussions of the previous night's episode at cafeteria duty . . . and I also remember when Catherine and I taped "The Betrayal," otherwise know as "the backwards episode" because of the reverse chronology (you could mark the passage of time by looking at Kramer's giant lollipop) but when we tried to play the episode back, we started in the middle, and got confused by the reverse chronology (and the lame nature of VHS technology) and ended up skipping around on the tape and watching the episode forwards in tiny fragments . . . but we just got cable TV this summer -- it was cheaper to get it bundled with our FIOS than to not have it at all -- and I watched the season premier of Breaking Bad on Sunday night . . . and because it's been so many years, I forgot how annoying it is to watch something in real time: you have to endure commercials and previews, you can't put on subtitles, there's no pausing so you can ask your wife pertinent questions or look up tangentially related details on the internet, and, worst of all, you have to wait until 9 PM to get started . . . I will try to make it through the final season because I love the show so much, and also so I can actually talk to people at work about the current plot twists, instead of running out of the room screaming, "DON'T SAY ANYTHING!" when anyone mentions Walter White, but after this one exception, then I am going back to my Netflix rabbit hole.
If you got FIOS, you might have a DVR cable box which will allow you to pause live TV shows and record them.
ReplyDeletewe have the lowest grade cable and box, i don't think it does diddly, but i will check.
ReplyDeleteThe DVR cable box from FIOS is about $15/month. We don't record anything but we pause all the shows we watch in real time right before they start. This builds up a buffer to fast forward through commercials. And we pause at least twice per hour to (1) allow zwoman to use the bathroom and (2) explain what happened to zwoman.
ReplyDeletethat sounds awesome, except that then i have to stay up until 9:15 to wait for "breaking bad" to buffer . . .
ReplyDeleteand you could substitute me for zwoman in that sentence.
Much like you, zwoman has a degree in English from a fancy school and she reads voraciously, but she can't follow what's happening in a movie or a TV show. She can explain the symbolism in "The Painted Bird" but she can't discern that Bobby Draper is at sleepaway camp when the Drapers are singing "Father Abraham" in a log cabin cafeteria.
ReplyDeletei get distracted by all the pictures.
ReplyDelete