by Judi
5. Yes, Dear (2000-2006)
I challenge you to watch more than a solid minute of this clip. IT’S NOT POSSIBLE to be more bored with a sitcom. Do you know what’s duller than watching a baby all day? Watching someone else watching a baby in the guise of entertainment. Now, I am one of those people who finds a great deal of comfort in sitcoms (the cheesier the better, let’s go), in the structure, the laugh track, the wacky neighbors, the tired plot lines. But I cannot stomach a sitcom that’s “phoning it in”, especially when there are some really brilliant shows out there that don’t get half a break. They canceled Samantha Who? after two seasons but this crime-against-sitcom-nature lasted for SIX WHOLE YEARS. Compare the two for yourself. (Clip with the dude from Boston Common and a baby or BILLY ZANE? This isn’t even a choice really)
4. Access Hollywood (1996-Present)
There’s a very solid chance that Access Hollywood will outlive me. Do you find that as depressing as I do? I understand that we, as a culture, simply can’t help ourselves when it comes to tabloid-mania and How Sad is Jen Now and PREGNANT CELEBRITIES OMG WE LOVE THEM. But at least when I read US Weekly at the supermarket, I don’t have Billy Bush’s voice yapping in my ear. (He has a radio show too, I just discovered. Who the hell is listening to that on their commute to work every day? I hope whoever he is, he doesn’t have a shotgun in the backseat). It’s all about my hatred of Billy Bush really. TiVo knows better by now, needless to say, if my yelping and constant stream of, “No no no no no no no no” when it tries to tape an episode is any indication. I’m going to put this in the simplest terms imaginable: I would rather get a gyno exam in Time Square at eight in the morning than watch Billy Bush and Teri Hatcher go shopping for bras.
3. Jon & Kate Plus 8 (2007-Present?)
I used to really enjoy Jon and Kate, back when it wasn’t completely embarrassing to declare your love for hard-ass Kate and her tyrannical ways and the way Jon just sat there like a defeated lump. Six back-to-back episodes of their eight kids roaming around the yard was solid entertainment to me on a Sunday afternoon (those kids are precious, come on). And then the SCANDAL. Which is one thing but the pair of them have suddenly morphed from decent people who stumbled into a reality show to Reality Show People who would do anything to keep their names in lights for one more week, at the expense of eight adorable nuggets. It’s nauseating. I won’t even dignify this space with a clip, that’s how disgusted I am.
2. Newhart (1982-1990)
I admit this is a bit of a jump, from reality show toads to a person who many people regard as a national treasure. And while I enjoy Elf as much as the next person, I just- I don’t get Bob Newhart. I don’t find him amusing at all. His show is kind of the equivalent of when I was a kid and we’d be driving home at night and Magic 106.7 was playing and the DJ (David Allen Bouche) had one of those voices that was supposed to be soothing but really he would stretch out the pauses to OBSCENE lengths so that every sentence took forever and it felt like any second now, someone would leap into the backseat and shove bamboo shoots up my fingernails just so I would have something else to think about. That’s what watching him on television is like for me.
1. Paris is My New BFF (2008-2009)
There will come a time, mark my words, when ALL OF US, all of us in America, will have That Moment- That Moment where we say, as a nation, that we cannot cannot CANNOT watch MTV ever ever ever again. No, not even when the Video Music Awards are on, no no no. Something will come along that is so plainly abominable that not even the value of a True Life marathon can wipe away the stench of putrid television filth.
For me, that moment came when someone at MTV said, “Let’s give Paris Hilton a TV show.” She pouts, she poses, she tortures America. And I’m just saying No.
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