American TV. As I’ve no doubt said before, it’s several hundred channels that really do embody the meaning of Quantity over Quality. Once you’ve managed to navigate your way around you will find a few gems, hidden well though they may be. Mainly I’m still watching the same big shows that I used to watch in the UK, only here we have the bonus of seeing them a month or more earlier. (And it can only be a matter of time before Duck Dynasty gets picked up by Dave, or Channel 5, surely – the UK needs Uncle Si).
Anyway, I digress. What I really wanted to whinge about is the annoying and totally unreasonable habit that American broadcasters have of suddenly, and without warning, taking a “season break”. What this means is, you’ve been happily enjoying the latest season of Elementary or what-have-you, and then out of the blue you tune in one week to find that they are randomly showing an episode that you saw three weeks earlier. Sometimes this will happen for a week, sometimes three, then without warning normal service is resumed. So you relax, then suddenly it happens again a week or two later. Talk about keeping you on your toes. There seems to be no pattern or wisdom to it at all. I can understand having a week off for Thanksgiving or something like that (if you insist), and possibly even the times when they feel they must show the basketball instead (although I might be more amenable to this if it were only shown on one channel rather than six – why? WHY??) but it’s those really random weeks when they just re-broadcast an old episode that really get up my nose. ARRGH! At this rate, despite starting a season a month or two ahead of the UK, we’ll be lucky to reach the season finale before Blighty does.
Meanwhile, Duck Dynasty chooses to broadcast in almost completely the opposite manner. Not only do we get a new episode every week but it’s always sandwiched between repeats of several previous episodes so there’s excuse for missing an episode. Now THAT’S how to keep me happy 🙂 . Except it’s their season finale next week, dammit!