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Monday, November 1, 2010

Our Guilty Pleasure Shows

A discussion with a frequent commenter on this blog who watches Private Practice gave us the idea for this post. We all have shows that we watch that are “guilty pleasures.” You can argue that all TV is a guilty pleasure. We don’t, because we think TV is essential to modern life. Some people play music while they get dressed, eat, cool down after a long day, wait for class in a gap between them, put on their makeup, or work out. We watch TV while we do those things.

Ern’s main guilty pleasure show is Intervention. It’s on A&E. Her favorite episode is the one where the girl huffs computer cleaner and has a lot of cats. We challenge you not to laugh when she fights the cops who are trying to separate her from her cats. IT. IS. EPIC. There's also a great spoof of it on an episode of South Park. Ern loves when people get better through the intervention and cannot watch too many of these in a row without getting sad, because some of them don’t get better. But this show is voyeurism of the highest order, and you actually learn something. When you watch the crazies on stupid dating shows or Jersey Shore, you don’t learn the patterns of addiction and enabling and what drives people to ruin their lives. After watching many hours of Intervention, Ern has determined that abuse + shame + drugs = train wreck. All of these people hate themselves and wallow in guilt, and that’s a shame. You have to find some mercy and forgive yourself for your past mistakes and bad moments, or life is going to suck. If everyone watched Intervention, we could kill the world's drug problem. It does not glamorize addiction at all. Mostly, it's really entertaining. Ern also enjoys The Real World/Road Rules Challenge, and she used to watch The Swan, which is a complete disaster, but it was really, really funny

You can see Allison the computer cleaner huffer here, in this video compilation of her "best" moments:



They have a lot of Intervention episodes to watch for free on the A&E Web site. It's pretty much the best show ever.

Leeard loves guilty pleasure shows, and Jersey Shore is one of them. She also enjoys The Real Housewives of New Jersey and American Idol. Ern only watches the performances of American Idol and mutes the rest of it. Leeard also watches Disney channel fare, such as Sonny with a Chance and Hannah Montana. Ern does not watch these shows, but downloads Demi Lovato’s music, because Demi is adorable and has a great singing voice. As she is obviously a sucker for teenage girl television, Leeard also watches The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Make it or Break it. She used to watch The Hills, but is thankful it is off the air. Leeard doesn't like people to know she watches The Bachelor(ette). She knows it's awful television, but she can't resist. She also watches Big Brother, and is completely without defense. There's no good reason to watch that show, but she does anyway. Leeard is realizing that she has quite a few more guilty pleasure shows than does Ern.

So what are the shows you watch that are just complete junk?

7 comments:

  1. Grey's Anatomy, Project Runway, and South Park are my guilty pleasures. I know not everyone would define these as junk tv, but I'm pretty sure I'd be better off reading a good book. But I just. can't. stop. watching.

    Oh, and definitely The OC and Private Practice, but I haven't watched them in years, and even then I only watched the first few seasons.

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  2. And every once in a while I'll watch an episode of Tosh.0 - that show makes me laugh really hard, but simultaneously Daniel Tosh really annoys me. And THAT is definitely complete junk.

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  3. Leeard is the opposite when it comes to Tosh.0 - She thinks Daniel Tosh is hilarious, but the show has never made her laugh.

    And we agree with The OC, at least when it was on the air. So mindless (usually), but so good.

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  4. Apart from the aforementioned guilty pleasures, I'm an avid One Tree Hill watcher and I'm obsessed with A&E's Paranormal State. The OC was a blast when it was on! Did anyone else yell at the TV for Marissa to just die already at the end of season three?

    My roommate and I also got into this miniseries on Starz called Pillars of the Earth. We're both grad students in English and history, so we found the program hilarious in its erroneousness, but we both admitted to kind of wanting to know what happened as it went along.

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  5. I should also mention that I've probably taken my American Idol obsession past the point of guilty pleasure at this point. Let's just say I will have a lot to blog about come January.

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  6. We watched Pillars of the Earth and totally loved it. It was a lot of fun.

    And Marissa was useless. Can't wait for your American Idol posts. Leeard still likes it alright, but Ern watches it out of some sort of duty and would be happy if it were cancelled. Although the new judges might be interesting.

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  7. Leeard loves Paranormal State, and Ghost Adventures. She's not proud of that second one.

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