A Rant about TV - a long time coming

If there’s one thing on this planet I’ve come to despise, it’s TV. There was a time I remember I’d do nothing all day long all through the week but come home from school and stare at the screen until bed time. And back before those days, I was watching those classic Hannah Barbara Scooby Doo, Where Are You? episodes. I even still have a massive compilation on VHS somewhere still. Wish I knew where so I could binge watch the old classics nobody remembers or even has.

All day long, I sit in a room with my TV in it, the one I’ve not used or bothered with since moving back home, leaving it behind for a number of years to collect dust. My room wasn’t touched in my absence, save for when my cousins came around to spend the night on-occasion when I wasn’t living there, meaning that it was always where I left it. But now that I’m back, a year has passed and it’s just…there, staring at me.

I should sleep, but I don’t because I lay awake until about five in the morning watching Kitchen Nightmares, Family Guy and American Dad, or maybe some horror film. I should pursue my dreams of being a punk rocker musician by writing my original music and jamming until my hands and fingers bleed, but I don’t because there’s a TV tempting me. I should get off my stool and go home so I can spend time with my family and maybe go out and get some fresh air, but I don’t because…do I have to say it? TV. It’s right. There!

It’s not because the shows are tempting and I want to watch them, but rather because my self-control is basically cack. (In English, that means it’s shagged. And in better-defined English, ‘shagged’ means ‘fucked’, but can also mean the other thing. You know what I’m talking about, ladies.)

For starters, ooh, my god, the ads. The ads! The mother-f-ing ads! Adpocalypse is neigh! I swear, when I sit down to watch a film on the horror channel, just about when I’m getting into it to the point where I’m completely engrossed with it, up pops a damn ad! The problem, other than ads are 90% of TV content? The films I watch tend to be two hours long, and every single ten or twenty minutes, it cuts to an add that lasts, like, double that! That way, I lose interest very easily and say, ‘oh, bugger this, it’d be easier to order a Blu-Ray.’, and that’s what anybody would do!

Oh, and my biggest rant that’s been building up inside of me for a VERY long time; the ads in general. To start this off, out of the many places I want to delve into, nobody has any originality! It pains me to the absolute death when I watch and advert. If you’re an American, I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but in this glorious hellhole of stupidity and terrible humour known as Hellend, it’s equivalent to having a shave in the shower on your nether regions and then nicking your goose egg, without the shaving cream.

The ad that makes me cringe more than anything? Virgin Media’s network ad. Virgin Media have always been terrible at advertising in a way without grossly exaggerating their messages and by trying to get on the side of most people without a sense of humour. They did this with the second to last ad they made featuring a cockney teenage girl who speaks like every sentence that leaves her mouth is a question when it’s not and then waffling with her mates about football before ending with her streaming on her tablet in bed right before her room is full of family and friends and they all have a ridiculous head banging session to dubstep while the viewers at home have epileptic seizures. That was about all the ad consisted of. It didn’t really divulge info about the network, it was just a stupid montage of cockney friends where they all head bang at the end to low-quality dubstep.

This one -

The new one, though, ho-ho, the new one is brain-melting. This time, it features a floating seal. Yes, a floating grey seal. It appears, hovering in mid-air in the living room, after saying ‘’Now, that gets the seal of approval’’ and it begins clapping its flippers. It then falls, breaks a coffee table and then, for literally no conceivable reason, fires rainbow-coloured lasers out of its eyes and brands its mark not the wall. The bran was a seal wearing those Thug Life pixel shades, which, let’s be honest, is just sad.

Seal ad -

For those of you with Credit Score on Money SuperMarket, do you remember that very annoyingly pathetic and infantile, poor-humoured ad with the boxer dog that never stops saying, ‘’What doing?!’’ each time the guy checks his phone? In my eyes, it’s like people were sat in a meeting, trying to brainstorm with what braincells they had left knocking about between their ears and one of them made a stupid voice and they never had a better idea. But, when you think about it, anything would have been better than that obnoxious dog voice. Literally anything.

Money SuperMarket Cat Advert -

I feel bad for the cat, too. It has that 'please kill me' face going on, especially when it's in the wing suit and parachute. The dog advert makes me want to pluck that entire ad from my brain and put it in a fire. I can't believe people actually like it.

''What Doing?!'' Dog Advert -

If that wasn’t enough for you, TV used to be quite decent. Programs that actually mattered where broadcasted with fresh material every time they aired. It was enough to keep the viewer’s attention. The oldest example is The Simpsons, which is the longest-running cartoon show of all time. The episodes used to bring the audience to tears, make them laugh until their pants became wet and it used to be so thought-provoking and emotional. If you look at it now, it’s like the rest of TV - Nobody is trying anymore.

There’s no build-up, no exploration, no questions raised, nothing. Like the episode when Bart is revealed to have a life bond-style friendship with four boys he met when he was a toddler during the Fourth of July. They set off a firework display and all have deli sword brands on their hands, which seems strange when you would think you’d have seen it long before now, but nope. When he asks Marge about it while she’s cleaning the bathroom, she sits on the toilet and finds a very conveniently placed bookcase next to it, which was never even there, and magically finds the photo Bart is looking for.

We had sitcoms like Bottom and The Young Ones in the 80’s and early 90’s, On the Buses in the 70’s, Only Fools and Horses, Mr. Bean, the old CBBC stunt course for children named Raven, all that good stuff. I have fond memories of those days, but when I see reality shows now, it’s all kelt nobody cares about but still somehow has enough of an audience to continue.

For Americans, this is the intro for The Young Ones -

And the intro for Bottom -

This is the 2008 intro for Raven -

To start, here’s the one I most hate out of all of them - Love Island. A show full of girls with no self-esteem or self-respect and a bunch of brick houses of douchebag guys that are no better and are only looking to satisfy their unsatisfiable libido by shagging each girl they see. There’s no ‘love’ about the show. It’s more or less a sexual conquest amongst sexually unsatisfiable douchebags thinking that it’s fine to shag a girl by tricking her into thinking you love her, have a fling, ditch her and move on to the next girl without expecting her to feel used. It’s wrong on so many levels and I don’t understand why these shows exist in the first place.

Next, there’s Made in Essex / The Real Housewives of Cheshire - I’m going to come out and say it: while some of these people may be genuinely nice on the inside, the type pleasant enough to have a conversation with, you know they’d secretly judge you. It makes me laugh really; if they are housewives, you are lead to believe they remain at home and take care of the place while their husbands are out working, right? When they’re not home and go out shopping, it’s more or less a field day at the shopping centre.

I don’t see what they have to brag about. Their husband makes all of their money and they spend it without a care in the world while somehow bragging that they’re successful when all they did was wait for the dough to be handed to them. Mix that with expensive designer clothes, high-end champagne and shit tonnes of handbags and high-heels, and you’ve got yourself a Cheshire Housewife. I, for the life of me, cannot stand any of their accents or the way they pronounce things. ‘Sauce’ is as it says not the tin for most of us, but in Essex, Cheshire and a number of other stuck-up towns, it’s ‘Sowce.’ Really squashed pronunciation.

Next, there’s The Mummy Diaries - Basically a reality show following the life of rich parents raising their kids. I mean, does this really need a better description? Every parent in the world does this, raising kids and watching them grow, so why would watching rich kids be brought up be any different? The only significant difference is most likely to be holidays featuring expensive ski trips to Aspen, living in hotel penthouses, countryside mansions, going on a playdate in a Ferrari or Aston Martin, getting diamond-studded rocking horses for Christmas, etc. That’s pretty much the size of it.

My point is that these are all shows that are almost saying ‘Look, this is how a rich person lives and how a peasant doesn’t. We have more money so we’re more interesting, ya-da-ya-da, cluck-cluck.’ All you see on TV now is a bunch of rich people because they feel they’re more interesting to watch.

And while I’m at it, when I spoke about Love Island? There’s another equally crap show called Ibiza Weekender. The same thing, but there are reps taking clients on holidays and making it as good as they can for them, all the while having most everything come as complimentary while they party their asses off each night in clubs, get pissed, have a drunken shag, sleep, repeat. Love Island with more alcohol, fun but with the same douche-iness.

Until TV has a more original idea on-deck, or if all of the people in the world that are now deceased suddenly raise from the dead and take over the BBC and the network from these chimps running the show, then I’m not interested. It’s become a total shit storm on TV in the modern day, enough so that it’s unbearable to watch it. The only thing that I think is still worth watching are the re-runs of Come Dine With Me, Mock the Week and the re-runs of the classic Simpsons episodes. Everything else can bugger off.

If there’s anything I’d really love to see, it’s another new rock band arriving on the scene, somebody who really understands who their audience is, who they’re playing to, a group of people living their life or hardship. I want to see that come back to our screens in the form of live performances in big venues, like in late 1993 when Nirvana played that Live and Loud gig. I’d also love to see theatre geniuses arrive back on stage with live broadcasts of their shows like Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson did with Bottom Live in the early 2000’s. Would it kill people and TV executives to at least try to do something to get rid of this cack and put something new and fresh up?

I swear, if I have to sit and watch another Britain’s Got Talent, or whatever other country Has Talent, I’m going to blow my brains out. Simon Cowell may be successful, but he’s the primary reason the music industry is as big a disaster as a botched sex change operation. Somebody has to patch the wound and staunch the bleeding for good. If not soon, I’m going to take my TV out next Bonfire Night and I’m tossing it onto the flames while drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels and waiting for it to smoulder to ashes. I’ll record it and send it to Simon Cowell with an attached note saying, ‘’You did this to our screens. Allow me to cleanse it of your sins.’’

I’ve come to seriously find myself to be disgusted and disgraced by the presence of TVs in our lives, how we’ve let ourselves fall to media products. I’d much rather have a real social life, spend my time in the outdoors where there is fresh air, nature and nothing but whole earth than sit in the same room as a TV. At least I now have some understanding of why Elvis chose to shoot a number of his TVs at point-blank range. Please, somebody, for the love of all that is holy, please, please, PLEASE get these executive TV chimps off the air and put something new on!

Alright, that’s it. Rant over. Go back to staring at your phones like zombies.

PS: If you thought this was a big rant, you’re so very, deadly wrong. My rant about smart phones and the way their presence in our every-day lives has shagged us up as a whole species and our way of life is much, much lengthier, preachy and straight-up blunt.