Wednesday Night Binge

As part of my proctastination efforts, there are a few TV shows that I consider do-not-misses. Three of those air, oddly enough, on Wednesday night, so I go the whole week watching basically no television only to run into a glut. We have TiVo, so any sane person would ask why I don't ration my watching and thus eat up only one hour a day with my tv habit. Ah...but would be the fun in that? Nope. Wednesday nights are glom nights.

Last night, though, two of my shows really let me down. I jumped on the Lost bandwagon after they reaired the pilot during those first weeks and have been riding shotgun ever since. But last night I was, dare I say it...bored. It bored me. Walt and Michael (who was a bonehead throughout most of the epi) bored me. Except for the last two minutes, which were enough, of course, to keep me panting for next week's episode, I wasted a good 59 minutes of my life. Too, every week my curiosity about how JJ Abrams and his crew are going to deliver up the goods even close to the anticipation they've created is pushed further than I could have imagined. There is no conceivable way they are going to give me the payoff I'm expecting. It's just not humanly possible.

The other disappointment was in The West Wing. I love this show. L-O-V-E it. But last night not only was the show 100% Josh-less (unforgivable!) but it magnified the biggest issue I've had since Day 1. The dialogue was horrible. It wasn't the words that were horrible or the way the actors delivered the words necessarily. It was the unnaturaleness of it. I mean, I could actually picture a script in my head as the characters blithely delivered line after line. There was no fluidity to it other than the fact that they were quick on the uptake. People just don't talk that way.

Now, before you can jump on my head and say that no one is as witty and clever in real life as the writing on TV, let me say that there's a difference between believable artificial dialogue and completely impossible artificial dialogue. The impossible comes IMO when character B whips out a line of dialogue in reaction to what character A has just said without even pausing to compose it. Are these people clairvoyant? That must be the reason they always have the right comeback no matter what. And not just right, but intelligent and clever and so nicely leading into whatever character C needs to say next.

I've noticed it before on TWW, most often during exchanges between Abby and Jed. I'd always chalked that up to Stockard Channing's acting style. But last night all of the characters were doing it. Bugged the heck out of me because I couldn't focus on what they were saying, just on how unreal it was that they were saying it that way in the first place. I've heard people complaining that TWW jumped the shark a while back and ever since Aaron Sorkin left it's been down hill. I haven't noticed and have enjoyed the show all the same. Last night? Not so much.

I won't divulge the other show I watch on Wednesday nights because it clearly falls under the category of Guilty Pleasure. Suffice it to say, next week will be the first new episode aired in nearly two months, and I'm waiting impatiently. If I'd have been smart, I would have used that two-month hiatus to break myself of the habit altogether.

But then what type of procrastinator would I be?