what people watch

I know I am going to regret this in, like, a week, when I am in some Phuket hostel, desperate for some random Americanness. But for now, I am kind of over TV.

Not all together, never that. I still miss my TiVo with unnatural fervor. More that I am over foreign hostel television. Aside from some random, serendipitous moments, like when I sit down with dinner the other night right as someone starts Little Miss Sunshine, or the season 9 Friends marathon that happened on Good Friday, most of what people watch in the rest of the world? Is crap.

I'm not even talking in the abstract, with the worldwide popularity of shows like Baywatch and CSI:Miami. I'm talking about what people with the remote - people from Britain, Germany, the Netherlands - choose to land on when flipping through Foxtel or Sky satellite cable. I'll even give a free pass to those who are forced to make a selection when the hostel does not have cable; then you have maybe five options, so you are very limited by whatever is the least offensive. I've been in that boat, and it's forced me into the position of choosing MTV programming. I'm not proud, and I hope it is never used to evaluate my viewing.

(Though, on a side note - the hostel in Mission Beach had Foxtel, but it would never come in due to weather, so we just had free-to-view. The week was saved, though, because one of the other backpackers was just coming from Thailand, where he'd bought an entire CD case worth of bootleg DVDs, so there were many a rainy afternoon that people spent watching Superbad, Blades of Glory, City of God, American Gangster, etc. I can't wait for Thailand...)

No, there is no convenient excuse here. There is no defense when I've witnessed person after person, in assorted cities, with various national backgrounds, SELECT to watch King of Queens. I've watched more of that show (read: any) on this trip than I ever had before. It's not better as you grow familiar with it.

I've watched, or seen other watching and walked away from - lots of everybody Loves Raymond, Yes, Dear, Las Vegas, and The Drew Carey Show. Lots.

And the movies! I've avoided watching Crocodile Dundee 1 AND 2 (while in Australia - the irony), The Time Machine, Picture Perfect, and some Mary Kate & Ashley-as-teenagers reality show movie I didn't even know existed (ah -this one). Every one of those, by the way, was selected. Often from a much better array.

That's the thing - we Americans export our crap as well as the good stuff, so maybe we're partly to blame. Maybe we've done our part to erode foreign tastes by sending over Tru Calling and Help Me Help You in with the Heroes and Pushing Daisies. But I mean, WE had those same suck shows, and WE fought back by not watching them until they got canceled. It's natural selection. What happens to nature when people SELECT the suck?

In Chile, in front of a CSI: Miami, a New Yorker who was on his third year of travel around the world, told me his theory behind the appeal of the show: The rest of the world likes blunt instruments, and David Caruso is a blunt instrument of acting. He is popular precisely because it is his job to state the obvious, and punctuate it by emphatically removing his sunglasses. The same would be true of the Hoff, Jerry Lewis, and all other inexplicably popular figures the world over.

All this TV is really more interesting to talk about than it is to watch, but that doesn't stop people, Lord knows I never look askance at someone for watching too much television, but there are people at each of the hostels I've been to who put me to shame even on my laziest of weekends. The two girls with the penchant for Olsen made-for-tv fare were in the TV room every single time I swung by, for the entire time I was in the Blue Mountains (which is also odd, as my four-day stay there was generally considered quite a long one). And the girl who watched the ENTIRE Friends marathon in Sydney has stuck in for everything that is on - marathons of Will & Grace and Malcolm in the Middle, every episode of Raymond, cricket matches, late-90s cinema; if it flashes color and light from the flatscreen, she will watch, evidently, as she was literally watching television every time I walked in or out all of last weekend. I come back to the hostel on Friday, and sure enough - there in front of an episode of the Simpsons. It makes me wonder - does she have an actual bed there? And do they not have television in England?

What people choose when they have the power of the remote is not necessarily what they most want to watch, because there is some silent peer pressure involved - you don't want to choose something that is going to make everyone else scoff or bolt from the room, or know you are a closet Olsen twin aficionado, so you pick what you like, but what you think others will as well. At least, that's how I justify it. However, while I rarely take remote control power, if I ever were the one choosing, I would NOT flip past The Daily Show when it's on. I don't care that it's really only appealing to Americans (and usually, I am one of the only ones). It breaks my heart when people pass it for Drew Carey, and I don't care if anyone else would like it. If I got to pick, I would watch it, and that's that.