TV Shows To Be Thankful For

This Thanksgiving let us celebrate the free over the air shows that give us joy.

Persons of Interest
Raising Hope
Sleepy Hollow
NFL Football

Short list but most of the other show are barely worth watching. Persons of Interest has been the best thing on TV lately, not including the premium cable channels.

CBS Monday Night Premieres

Except for Merritt Wever winning and her short speech the Emmys were just typical.

How I Met Your Mother: The Locket / Coming Back
This is going to be a long weekend. They establish that "The Mother" is adorable and perfect in every way. Ted is stalking Robin, again. Marshall is doing a road trip with Sherri Shepard.  Then on the second half Robin seems more insecure then Barney. Overall some nice moments but too much foreshadowing.

2 Broke Girls: And the Soft Opening
The writers threw every genital joke they saved up over the break into this one episode. I missed this show and glad it is back but they still have Jennifer Coolidge doing the worse character currently on TV.

Mom: Pilot
Horrible women use alcoholism as an excuse for their messed up lives. Maybe there is more to the story but the canned laughs made it distracting. I prefer show without a studio audience so I need to get use to other people laughing at stuff that not funny.

Don't Get Robbed!

New shows are arriving and one looks particularly bad.

¡ROB!

From what the commercials shows Rob Schneider marries a extremely hot girl of Mexican descent and as he meets the family the hilarity ensues.

Now I enjoy Rob and Cheech Marin is always great but nothing else is appealing. Look the best way to judge a book is by its cover, that is why books have two covers (dust jacket).

This seems like typical bad sitcom clash of cultures that should have been relevant in the 90s or even the 70s when Mexican life was unknown to most. Plus that chica is way too young.

What would have been great is the exact same show except with a Muslim or Arab or Persian family.

Sure I have been wrong with other California centric shows like The Shield which at first I vowed to never watch but then got hooked. But this is rare and also that was a drama. Sitcom should be elevated to a higher standard and just by the ads it seems like a one joke show.

Feel free to watch a few episodes and get back to me. I am open to change.

Happy Birthday CBS

Est. October 20, 1951

Add to that they have 20 of the 30 shows on TV and CBS is riding high. I attribute the recent success to scripted shows versus every other networks reality crap.

Currently I watch:

How I Met Your Mother - Needs an ending soon.
2 Broke Girls - Funny, a bit unrealistic.
Two and a Half Men - Bring back Charlie Sheen.


Big Bang Theory - Funny but needs more science and less drama.
Rules of Engagement - Very funny, extremely underrated.


The Talk - Can only watch it once a week because Sharon and Sheryl are like nails on a chalkboard while chewing on aluminum foil.

Sunday Football - Any game is good but NY games are the best.

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Monday 2011 Premieres

How I Met Your Mother: The Best Man, The Naked Truth
Basically if you saw the first three episodes in 2005 then you have not missed anything.

Two and a Half Men: Nice to Meet You, Walden Schmidt
Charlie was murdered by Rose and it's all a laugh. This was a sad episode. Not because of the death but because of the lack of good jokes and a rabid audience.

2 Broke Girls: Pilot
Williamsburg, Brooklyn my backside. This is another New York City show written by someone who has never even seen Brooklyn on a map.

 GRAFFITI! Really! 

This is not the the 1980s there has not been any graffiti on L or G lines for years. Plus they treat the neighbor like a war zone when in reality thanks to hipsters it is the wussiest 'hood in all of NYC.

Kat Dennings is great as a Brooklyn waitress who takes in an upper-class girl who lost everything. Garret Morris brings down the show as the one-liner guy. Everyone in the show is incredibly smart yet oddly poor.

Castle: Rise
Det. Beckett is not dead and 2 months/15 minutes later she is back.

Fall is Nigh

Ok this is just ridiculous.

CBS has already started to promote the Fall schedule and Summer is still days away.

WCBS

Channel #2 on the box
Known for years as the old folks network even if the rating did not show a significantly older demographic. They got this reputation for hanging out with the elderly. Angela Lansbury, Andy Griffith, and Dick Van Dyke all had hit shows on the network for years.
Trying to break the stereotype CBS picked up failed shows from other networks like a Golden Girls spin-off(NBC) and Family Matters(ABC) hoping to attract the faithful viewers. Despite this soap operas like The Young and the Restless and As The World Turns kept the mornings full of youngster and the housebound. The Price is Right became a fixture for decades and only contributed to it's old feel even with Drew Carey as the new host.
It wasn't until Survivor appeared along with The Amazing Race that a new adventurous side started to emerge. Soon new edgy sitcoms, dramas about the supernatural, and crime shows flooded the network. They did a rare thing of revamping their image but what of the elderly. Shouldn't they have their own place on the TV landscape?

History
Started in 1928 on the radio.
In 1937 Guiding Light premiered on radio.
By 1940 a color television signal was being broadcast.
From the 50s to the 80s CBS made ratings history with, "Who Shot J.R.?" and the final M.A.S.H episode.
Due to its antenna location CBS is one of the few stations unaffected on September 11, 2001. They lent their broadcast to UPN channel 9 and many South American networks.
2009 sees the cancellation of Guiding Light due to poor ratings and high costs.

Highlights
Monday night comedies - Granted they quickly become annoying but they are still good for a laugh or two. The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men are among the better.

Forensics - Occasionally I watch a few of the CSI, NCIS, LOL$%$OMG*, etc. Great science but horrible acting.

Friday dramas - Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs are worth watching yet the constant cast changes are disturbing.

Football - Real American Football games carrying the Giants or Jets with extra games when possible. NY has some ridiculous laws about how many games can be shown at once so often overtime leads to problems.

Lowlights
Reality - I did see the first Survivor and it was okay. Two minutes after watching the second season I realized the contestants were all acting, not scripted but being fake. It stopped being about survival and was an hour long audition tape. Never got into Amazing Race because I don't get the concept, are they running or playing games, and is the whole thing a setup or can you jump borders and dodge bullets?

News - The weakest of all the news providers they replace Dan Rather with Katie Couric. This is the equivalent of replacing a ladder with a pogo-stick. They play down every story and even if 60 Minutes got an interview with Bin Laden live there is good chance I would fall asleep through it.

College Sports - I hate college sports and every year two weeks of regularly scheduled programming gets interrupted for team spirit and athletes that we will never see again.

Advertising
National ads, the logo is not always seen on screen, and few noticeable in show product placements. CBS did start a trend on the soap opera As The World Turns by revolving a storyline around one female lead who was feeling old and decided to get her hair colored with an in-home hair treatment product. It was forced and awkward and I can't fully recall the product so it was also ineffective. During sports event the ads are overwhelming, now with computer generated ads the grass and walls of different events carry commercials only the viewer will see.