The Appeal of ReRuns
byI wrote last week about a podcast we’d be listening to, where one of the show themes was about TV reruns [ms604]. The woman producing the segment said that Boy Meets World was her guilty pleasure, which made me shudder then wonder, what are mine?
First off, I know you’re thinking ‘why not just turn off the TV, get up from the couch and do something else if there’s nothing new on?’ Well there’s a time and place for everything. By reading my blog you can probably tell that John and I are not afraid to hop out of the house and go for a walk which then turns into a several-hour-log trek through muddy pathways. We do have a social life, we do get exercise but there are just some times when you need to sit down and let your mind go to mush.
There are those shows you’ve seen 100 times but always prompt you to end your channel surfing the minute you come across them. On the podcast [thisamericanlife] they mention it could be a questions or comfort, feeling comfortable watching reruns, if even just to reminisce about that time in your life when that show came out. I don’t know if I have many reasons for watching them, I just know there are only a select few that do make me stop in my tracks when I’m looking for TV to be my companion for the night. The repeat offenders in my books, (and I’m probably not alone on this) would be The Simpsons, who dominate syndication.
But what about the lesser knowns? Not just Simpsons, Friends or Seinfeld, but the shows that were and are total crap. The ones you might not want to admit you watched religiously 10 years ago. The ones available for viewing several times a day now, so you just give in and you watch. If there’s new nothing on TV, why not venture down the rerun road?
A couple of my guilty pleasures would be Futurama & Family Guy but they’re too recent and too great to fit into this category. So I guess I have to say News Radio (with Phil Hartman, pre-Lovitz era), and Saved by the Bell (not the original old one, or the newer College years).
John bugs me when I won’t re-watch an episode of, say… Heroes the day after it first aired but I’ll watch things I’ve seen dozens of times before. Well, aside from the buffer zone of about 8 years since I last watched certain episodes of those shows, it is also kind of amusing. Things you thought were funny, or things that were serious and now looking back, they’re just hilarious (like most of the fashions from the early 90s and 80s). It’s a trip down memory lane, opening a time capsule, discovering a new reason why some things are funny, reciting hilarious lines that you thought you’d forgotten… “that is SO not the opposite of stealing someone’s underwear!” or “that’s okay DJ, you can be grounded next weekend“.
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The Tai-Tai bought seasons 1-4 of Bewitched at Christmas…and my 9 year old son won’t stop watching them. Somebody, please help! I constantly walk around the house humming the theme song: da-duh, da-da. da-dadada-dada….Arrrghghghg..
Me? Give me a game, any day. Can’t stand sit-com or dramatic TV. I don’t care what the game is, so long is there is a level of risk and violence involved. Hockey…football…Aussie football…rugby union. You ever watch hurling?? I’m thinking this game is the way god intended field hockey to be played.
No hurling here, just curling 😛
I think the only old or rerun sporting event I’ve seen is a game from the ’94 cup run, I wouldn’t know where to start otherwise.
I gave away my TV. Voila, no more reruns.
I do love seeing classic NBA games on TV though. Magic! Kareem! Larry Bird! Pete Maravich! Jerry West!
I rarely see tv anymore. But I love King of Queen’s re runs. Cheers is a good one. Remember head of the class, Silver Spoons, Perfect strangers?!?
If you’re missing your old shows, you can try out TVtropolis. They have all those old shows playing in regular time slots. Shows like Ellen or Ned & Stacey. Not sure if they go older than the 90s but I sometimes find myself stopping for a quick peek before I continue on my merry, surfing way.
Yeah or Who’s the Boss. Dude, Mona was pretty loose eh ?
Small Wonder ruled
Vicki the robot :inlove:
Silver Spoons ! I loved how they had a train in their house and Ricky Schroeder wasn’t too hard on the adolescent eyes.
But would you watch reruns of those shows now? Silver Spoons is where ‘Carlton’ from Fresh Prince got his start, as Alfonso… which is his real name.
Small Wonder? What about that other show that came on around that time… I think with the chick from Charles in Charge maybe… and she could stop time by pressing her hands together? Okay yeah… I swear I had a real childhood.
Oh , I love that show where the girls Dad was an alien ! She had the wierd thing that she could use to talk to him. Is that what you are talking about?
Yeah, that’s the one
Anyone re-living the early ’90 with those 90210 reruns?
lol @ Small Wonder! How’s she doing nowadays?
the show was called “shes out of this world” or something
and yeah, she was the middle child in charles in charge
was the theme song “would you like to swing on a star… carry moonbeams home in a jar…” I swear it was.
yep thats the theme song
youtube it, duh
My personal favourite has always been Star Trek The Next Generation. I’ve always enjoyed the geeky, yet socially-hopeful attitude that these series have taken towards sci-fi, and humanity in general…
And of course there are the classic cartoons, the OLD Ninja Turtles, Inspector Gadget, and the ORIGINAL Transformers…