Preserve the 80s

Lately it’s occurred to me that my taste in tv differs wildly from the taste of the average person. The shows I seem to enjoy most either get canceled within a few weeks or ended their original run 20+ years ago. Fortunately some of these shows are available on TV Land, such as the great Sanford and Son, and others, such as The Mullets, have faded forever into obscurity. My goal in writing this post wasn’t to wax nostalgic for my favorite lost tv shows, but rather to bitch about the popular ones that I hate, so I’ll get started.

1. The Office – For a couple of years now I’ve heard people incessantly quote and talk about this show but I never watched it. That recently changed a few weeks ago when I actually watched a couple of episodes on TBS. The hour or so that I spent watching them was about as enjoyable as the time when I was a kid playing basketball when my friend threw a bounce pass that hit me square in the balls. Usually when people constantly imitate a line from a tv show, it’s much more annoying and much less comical than when the actual character on the show says it. However, when it comes to the “that’s what she said” line from The Office, it’s infinitely more annoying when the character himself says it than it is through any imitator I’ve ever encountered. Most of the characters on the show remind me of the assholes I went to college with who I’d get stuck working with for group projects who would have me do all the work then they’d take all the credit…. but that’s material for another post.

2. The Office (UK version)- I don’t know how popular this show is, at least in America, but I’m assuming it must be very popular in the UK as it was the inspiration for the American version. I’ve never even watched 1 second of this show aside from commercials, and I already hate it more than anything else on tv. I especially hate that blond haired guy on the show who looks like an adult version of that kid from Home Alone. Every time I see him on tv I seriously consider smashing the cable box so I won’t be subjected to his maddening visage again.

3. American Dad – When Family Guy first came out, it was one of my favorite shows on tv. When it finally came back from cancellation, it wasn’t the same show anymore. It became pretty much nothing but meta-humor and a sounding board for Seth MacFarlane’s political views. I’m not saying that he shouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity to let his views and messages be heard, but making them the basis of the show took away from any of the enjoyment I once got out of it. You watch a show like Family Guy to escape from the stresses and problems of life, not to be reminded of them.

I’m getting off the subject a little bit here, but my point is that American Dad is just a clone of Family Guy – not of the Family Guy I once loved but rather of the current Family Guy which is unwatchable. Not one character on the show is even remotely likable. If you took the characters on Family Guy and removed all of the humorous/likable aspects of them, you’d have the cast of American Dad. I despise all of them, but I think I hate the alien most, though the daughter gets a high hate ranking too as she looks like a cartoon version of my pepsi loving ex girlfriend who was once alluded to in a previous post.

4. Friends- Unfortunately Maddox beat me to the punch on this one, but it’s just too shitty of a show not to be mentioned in this article. Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox were hot back when Friends was in production, but that still wasn’t enough to save the show from being a pile of steaming, mucous-laden geriatric shit. I hate the high pitched tinny voices of all the women on the show and I hate the way the men talk even more. I especially despise that Guido type guy with the spiked hair who eventually got his own spin-off. The only episode of Friends that I ever watched all the way through (and it was at a friend’s house so I had no choice) was one where one of the guys on the show gets depressed and two of the women take him to a really pathetic strip club and he won’t stop wearing sweat pants. What the fuck kind of a plot is that for a show? The answer, a shitty one. Friends also has the most annoying theme song of any show aside from The Nanny.

5. The Nanny- Do I really need to explain this one?

6. Ren and Stimpy- I never even saw this show, but an asshole I went to elementary school loved it and that’s reason enough for me to hate it.

7. Fraggle Rock – This is an older one, but I’ve hated this show ever since I was in nursery school. I seemed to be the only kid in the 2-8 year old age bracket who didn’t like it. I hated the songs, I hated the characters, I hated the props, I hated the puppeteers, and I hated the channel that put it on the air. Already a budding misanthrope during the time when Fraggle Rock was being made, I’d fantasize about the hippie-ish fraggle having some kind of accident whilst painting and succumbing to blood poisoning or the hyperactive one with the red hair getting too excited and running off a cliff any time I got stuck having to watch an episode.

I don’t have the time to write too much more tonight so I’ll just list off some other beloved shows I despise. The (dis)honorable mention list is as follows: Home Improvement, Phenom, Barney Miller, WKRP in Cincinatti, I Love Lucy, A Different World, Punk’d, Jackass, Undeclared, The Dating Game, How I Met Your Mother, Family Ties, Anime in general, Perfect Strangers, Step by Step, Sliders, Star Trek Voyager, Deep Space Nine, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader, American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and many others, but I’ll stop here because if there’s not enough space on the entire Internet to fit the rest of this list.