Watching Television

I QUIT WATCHING TELEVISION in the early nineteen seventies, except for sports, news, educational TV, and an occasional movie. Famous prime time shows like "Dallas", "The Rockford Files", "Matlock", McGiver", "Three's Company", "Hill Street Blues", "Third Rock From The Sun", "24", "Breaking Bad", "Hawaii Five Oh", "CSI", "Charlie's Angels", "L.A.Law", "Sex IN the City", "E.R.", "Barnaby Jones", and a whole host of other famous television prime time programs, from the nineteen seventies to the two thousand and teens, sit com, drama, cops, doctors, lawyers, the whole gamut, I never saw any of them. Anything After Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Star Trek Spock I never saw, except for some reruns of Mash. I watched mainstream network TV when I was a kid in the nineteen sixties, which to me seems to be pretty much what TV is for, kids, then pretty much quit by high school. I fondly remember the days of three black and white broadcast networks, Walter Cronkite looking fuzzy, and walking across the room to change channels or adjust the volume. Then, about six weeks ago, Sept. 2018, I bought my first flat screen. They're cheap now. I waited long enough. It stayed in the box for six weeks, while the cats circled around it and I contemplated whether to return it to Wal Mart, give it to a neighbor, or just leave it in the box as an amusement for my cats. Finally, intrepidly, I got it out, set it on a stand, and hooked up an antennae. When I figured out that I could turn it on from across the room, I did so, and got three channels, crystal clear, living color, flat as a pancake. These new TVs are marvelous, aren't they? I watched a little news, noting the pores on the weather hottie's lovely face. I saw some cop and drama show on CBS, with gorgeous lay cops, and gorgeous young female criminals. A lady had her house full of hoarder's trash, full of garbage, disgusting, and the neighbors were complaining about it. A black cop and a hot lady cop visited, and warned her to clean it up. She said she would, but just couldn't seem to get started. They came back later, because the neighbors were by this time losing patience, and becoming downright surly. I started to wonder why everyone didn't just chill, and realize that what the lady needed was help, not threats of prosecution and incarceration. Why not just gang up a group of neighbors and hot cops, and clean the joint up, then order pizza, being careful to take the box with them when they leave? That wouldn't make much a television drama, would it...then, a high school girl was suspended for a week for engaging in, I think, prostitution on her own time after school hours. Again I thought; "what this girl needs is help, not punishment!". Disgusted, I turned the TV off, after realizing that I didn't have to move out of my seat to do so. I briefly considered returning it to its box, and then to the store, but I realized that the cats had already ripped the empty box to shreds. Now, i'm wondering whether the idiots ever figured out that all they needed to do was help the lady with the trash filled hoarder house, and that all they needed to do was give the high school girl some healthy activities, inclusion in groups of kids her own age, some parental love, and a nice young man to go out on healthy dates with. Maybe that's how it all turned out! On the other hand, maybe everybody ended up dead, or in the federal pen. I'll never know, because first thing in the morning I'm going to take the sonofabitch back to Wal mart, box, or no box.