We watch too much TV.
I’m not kidding.
We, as Americans, watched an average of 34 hours a week last year. That’s more than a part-time job! And it amounts to the most TV consumption by Americans ever, according to the Nielsen Company (via the New York Times.)
Blame addictive TV.
Shows like CBS’ “Hawaii Five-0,” the breakout hit for the No. 1 network among total viewers, and Fox’s “Glee” are the problem. They’re too fun, too interesting, too hard to resist.
Then there’s cable hits like MTV’s “Jersey Shore” and AMC’s “The Walking Dead.” They got tons of media hype — and viewers tuned in. I know highly educated people with demanding jobs who literally TiVo “Jersey Shore.” They’re addicted the drama of Snookie, JWOW and The Situation.
Even the History Channel got a few notches in the viewership belt, with “Pawn Stars” and “American Pickers” luring eyeballs.
But why are we so addicted? I mean, 34 hours a week? I could earn a nice side income with that time.
So what in the world are we watching? Here are my guilty TV pleasures:
• “Top Chef All Stars” (Bravo)
• “Hawaii Five-0” (CBS)
• “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover” (Bravo)
• “America’s Best Dance Crew” (MTV)
• “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” (Food Network)
• “The Millionaire Matchmaker” (Bravo)
• “Project Runway” (Lifetime)
***
About tonight’s episode:
Highlights
• Taryn Manning. Big highlight. I’m glad to see she had a bigger role than in past episodes. The women need more air time.
• It was nice to see Al Harrington back on the small screen.
• Scott Caan was nominated for a Golden Globe. I concur.
Lowlights
• The cast butchered — butchered — the pronunciation of “yakuza.” Only Caan gets a free pass since he’s not supposed to be local to begin with. But the others, no excuse.
• The yakuza gang looked more like a Korean boy band than real criminals.
• I’m lost. I still don’t know what’s really going on. Maybe I’m tweeting too much…
***
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30 Comments
My wife and I absolutely LOVE the show Nikita on the CW. Maggie Q is such a badass.
@firebomb56 I didn’t care for it at first, but then it really picked up steam and became a great show!
@MaxMaxMax I agree totally. It has it’s slow moments for character development that sometimes seem to stretch a little too long, but that’s fine. Any time Maggie Q is blowing stuff up, I’m good with that!
DVR is the greatest thing. Makes it so easy to watch all my favorite shows like :
Attack of the Show ( g4 network )
Saturday Night Live
Top Chef
Ghost Adventures
Sports Center
Pardon the Interruption
Big Brother
Survivor
Amazing Race
Walking Dead
Hawaii Five O
Diners Drive Ins and Dives
Man Vs Food
The Event
Five O drinking game, every time they said ” Yah-koooooo-zah”, I took a shot. Ran out of booze before the show was over.
My guilty TV pleasures: Hawaii Five-0, Glee, Modern Family, The Best Thing I Ever Ate. And now with the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), I think I might soon have more guilty TV pleasures….
My current guilty pleasure is One Tree Hill. For a long time, my guilty pleasure was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Cat, what about rolling into “Kaimuki” with Chinaman’s hat in the background? Huh??? They GOTTA get better with their geography than that…
Thought the show was interesting last night, definitely getting on track writing wise! Unfortunately I don’t share your enthusiasm for the casting of Taryn Manning as McGarrett’s sister. She was cast great in Hustle & Flow, but not right at all here. She looks and talks like a drug addict character… unless they want her role to be a bad seed of some sort, her character at least to me is an unlikable one.
Always good to see Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa!
Oh man!!! An entire post (of my fave TV shows) wiped out before hitting “Post Comment.” It just all of the sudden refreshed to the article page…
• sigh *
Someone puhleeeeeze fix Livefyre…
@MaxMaxMax Didn’t McGarrett’s sister kick out the passenger side light? But when they chased them in the chopper, the driver’s side light was hanging. 🙂
@MaxMaxMax You can send an email to [email protected] and follow up with @livefyre. Most likely @jennalanger will follow up with you.
[okay this is weird… LiveFyre and JennaLanger didn’t pop up as a selectable option this time.]
@MaxMaxMax Hey max, that one doesn’t sound like a Livefyre issue. The page refreshing and opening up to the article page again sounds like a delayed call from something on the page that caused the whole page to refresh. There’s nothing in the Livefyre widget that can do that.
@jkretch @harrycovair I wasn’t sure where or where not LF was implemented in the site. So it’s only the commenting engine and anomalies could be a server issue?
Another thing that is common is that sometimes the “reply to comment” field will just close up. When I click on “reply” again, my comment is there, but grayed out. I can’t copy or continue editing or post. It’s just dead.
Anyway, I just have to remember to select all and copy every few lines or so.
Thanks for the feedback.
@MaxMaxMax Never mind, I rechecked and Mary kicked out the driver side rear light.
@MaxMaxMax
“Cat, what about rolling into “Kaimuki” with Chinaman’s hat in the background? Huh??? They GOTTA get better with their geography than that…”
You gotta remember, though, this is not real Hawaii, this is Fictional Hawaii. The director can change it around however they want. Almost every show does this. When the original Charlie’s Angels did their half-season in Hawaii to boost ratings, they would show car chases that started in Waikiki, then be in Makaha seconds later. Funny to us, but the rest of the world doesn’t know the difference and it looks great.
@firebomb56 I understand about the fiction, and have no problem with traveling through worm holes to get from Waikiki to the North Shore in five minutes. But, I don’t understand particularly stating that the area around Chinaman’s hat IS Kaimuki. Not that they drove from Kaimuki to Kahuku, but that the little text came on screen to basically say, “This is Kaimuki.” Why couldn’t they just call it what it is? Kahuku or Kualoa Ranch, etc.
@MaxMaxMax It’s goofy for sure, but I just LOL and chalk it up to Director’s perogative. Maybe the script called for Kaimuki and he didn’t like it (or it was raining there that day, etc)? It doesn’t really hurt the story any to do that (certainly no worse than car-chase wormholes). Now if they show that same place again sometime and call it Kahuku, then they’re busted, LOL! I want to be able to get from Waikiki to the North Shore in 5 minutes IRL!
Beside Hawaii Five-0, I like to watch Dirty Jobs, Pickers, Pawn Stars, NCIS, NCIS LA, Food Network, Travel Channel, A&E, History, Spike MANswer 🙂 (nah joke)
I can see spending that much time watching TV. actually the TV ends up watching me :^)
We decided to “reduce” our cable a few months ago. Our bill was up to around $140 a month after taxes and fees for all the shows that we thought we were watching, but we did some research and found out that most of it is available online for free, or from Netflix for $9.99 a month.
Cable bill is now down to $69 a month, and haven’t missed much.
Speaking of Hawaii Five-O, Kaimuki Country Club? That looked like Koolau Golf Course to me..
@Matt_the_Cat That was Koolau GC. If anyone saw the tweets fly by last night, someone also grabbed the Twitter handle kaimukicc . Now that was funny!
I watch as little TV as I can help, so 34 hours a week is mind-blowing to me. That said, I’m great at finding other ways to waste that time. 🙂
I used to be a SyFy (formerly SciFi), FoodTV,and “24” addict. I stopped watching FoodTV and will occassionally watch something on SyFy. Other than that it’s HI 5-0 and the local news. I cut out my tv time from 30 hrs per week to less than 10 hrs per week.
Other than sports (NFL playoffs!), my big TV time sucks are:
* 30 Rock (I watch on Netflix streaming)
* American Dad (ditto)
* South Park (enjoying a nice resurgence after years of being so-so)
* the endless cop show reruns of CSI, Law & Order, NCIS, etc.
Okay, so that’s who the supposed Oyabun was… Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa. I couldn’t figure it out. He looks so much smaller than he used to be. Remember he used to be bigger and buffer. I laughed when Mark Dacascos (who was clearly the real Oyabun) showed up. Iron Chef America… waiting for his look. 🙂 I like both actors. Yeah, the butchering of Yakuza… not good. Laughed when McGarrett gave his sister the shaka before she got on HAL to return back to the mainland.
Anyways, we watch too much TV too. Between kids shows and shows my husband and I watch… too much. My in-laws got a Roku for Christmas and loved how it’s connected to Netflix. I’m ready to get rid of all the movie channels, which we never watch and never has the stuff I want to watch, for a Roku. We only have it as a signing on bonus to our AT&T fiber optic TV. DVR is the best. At least we can watch the stuff we want.
Guilty TV pleasures eh? OK here’s just a few:
Chuck (NBC), Human Target (FOX), 5-0 (CBS): brainless action FTW
The Triple D–Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (Food)
Chopped (Food, I know there are similar shows but for some reason I like this one)
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (Travel)
Rehab: Party at the Hard Rock Hotel (truTV, well it was a guilty pleasure, before truTV moved to digital)
Korean dramas (yes I am a guy and I watch Korean dramas)
DokoGa TV (OC16)
Soko ga Shiritai reruns on KIKU (I’ve seen ’em all but I will always peek in and watch them again if it’s a favorite)
baaad Cat. make me take a look at my list of shows and face reality. at least we have a dvr so we only spend 2/3 of the time watching a show. (the reality type shows are my wife’s pics, but i watch them, too usually)
Chuck
H50
HIMYM
Big Bang Theory
Community
NCIS LA
CSI
CSI M
CSI NY
Nikita
Blue Bloods
Glee
SYTYCD
ABDC
AI
Burn Notice
30 Rock
Modern Family
I also scan Food Network and Food TV as well as the late night talk shows and DVR them if anything interesting is on. Add in odd sports events, occasional Mythbusters and other assorted stuff.
would be worse if i was at home. then you could add in about 4 or 5 OC 16 shows (Doko Ga, Fishing Tales, Hawaii Skin Diver, Ultimate Japan, etc
@matti2d Forgot about Nikita! I still have to catch up on episodes. I’ve been downloading the HD files since KHON doesn’t broadcast The CW in HD. The teenyboppers in the show make me cringe but Hawaii born Maggie Q kicks all kinds of ass, much more than Kono!
i miss Posh Nosh.
This makes me freakishly unAmerican, as other things just make me freakish, but I have not seen one episode of any show mentioned in today’s post. I used to like a show called Northern Exposure, but people I trust advise that it is no longer running. I cut my cable bill to $0 in 1986 and have never gone back. Too bad I didn’t use all that extra time and all the money I saved to invent something indispensable or to save the planet.
The Art of Enjoying Each Other’s Company a’la Patti Stanger: ” Bring your romance, your A game, and totally spoil them rotten.”
What’s not to like?
Doh! forgot Undercover CEO. brillian premis and a fun show. Last week’s show was set an NCL cruise ship that was docked in Maui. No locals, but spec-tac-ular Maui scenery. Show would be highly bloggable for Cat.