What’s on TV ?
Mar 7th, 2007 by morpheus
I decided to watch TV recently.
My roommate was out with some work, and I finally had an opportunity to have my way with the TV.
But after a few hours of channel surfing, I found out that I wasn’t missing much before.
There was not a single program worth watching.
There were soap operas, which usually involves women crying or delivering repetitive dialogs while making strange angles with the camera, which the cameraman keeps zooming and panning at random.
I begin to wonder why they can’t make a series about people who even remotely resemble anything real.
In soaps, they all live in huge mansions, have several cars and chauffeurs for each one of them. They are all run successful family businesses. They’re all filthy rich ! Heck, when they talk money, it’s never a sum under a million bucks. The women all wear makeup and jewellery all the time, and I mean All the time … they even sleep with 2 kg of gold and expensive stones on them.
They are all either 100% good guys or 100% bad guys, nothing in between.
But I digress …
A typical soap episode starts with a recap, which takes around 5 minutes and covers the last episode’s story in more detail than they did it during the actual run of that episode.
Then they take a commercial break. Then two ladies come on screen looking at each other menacingly and the camera man shows off his skill by zooming in and out at their faces, while the music troop plays dramatic drum rolls until … the next commecial break.
Again the same scene appears, this time incredible amounts of tears flowing from the ladies’ eyes. (their makeup remains intact, by the way).
And before you can say “this is so freaking boring” (when you’re high on marijuana to the point of time-dilation, and then say it really slowly), it’s over.
Phew … that was a lot of storyline for one episode.
Heck, I’ve seen a soap where a family spent the whole episode wondering who’d sent them that mysterious parcel … I hear they didn’t open that parcel until 2-3 episodes later.
Just incase you missed any of the blindingly furious action, there’s always a repeat telecast soon. Or you can always watch any other soap, and pretty much find the same story.
There are also reality shows and talent hunts.
Which usually mean telephone/mobile operators making loads of money and people doing disgusting things just to be on TV.
For example, eating squishy bugs, jumping off cliffs while their pants are on fire or even trying to sing !
“please please please vote for me please please please” … amazing ! what talent !
(My roommate digs all of those though … you can get an idea of what I have to put up with)
You’ll also find film awards ceremonies on almost half the channels.
Which involves self-inflicted “celebrities” pretending to be cool and imporant.
There will also be few such “stars” dancing like frogs on the stage, and a couple of anchors cracking the worst of the jokes.
Cartoons ?
They seem to be all Japanese these days.
If you are juvenile by the standards of a kindergarten kid and like to make a great fuss about spinning tops or cards or imaginary animals … you’ll probably like them.
But by it’s very definition, a cartoon is supposed to be funny.
Maybe the licensing fees are lower for these Japanese animation films.
The sports channels have all hired retired/expelled cricketers to discuss Saurav Ganguly, and I’m not going to even mention all the music/devotional/fashion channels due to the obvious obsecene nature of their nonsense programs.
That leaves me with the discovery channel, and you know what ?
They’re running a women’s day special …
I’m going back to playing some game on my computer.