No TV...Now With Less "No"

If you know me well enough you know that I've cut back on TV.

Back in June Deanna and I decided to cut out TV for a month. It went well enough that we got rid of cable altogether. We would still watch show on DVD, but no TV. Well...that was during the summer. Turns out there are a lot of shows that stop in the summer and start up in the fall. Weird, huh?

The nice thing? Pretty much any show I'm interested in is online. I can watch the full thing online! Thanks technology! The only down fall is I usually have to wait until the next day to watch. Each station has their own rules. NBC shows get posted at 2:00am Pacific time. So if I want to watch Heroes or The Office in Maine I need to wait until 5:00am the day after it originally aired. CBS posts Kid Nation at midnight EST but Survivor: China doesn't show up until the next day.

My current love/pet peeve is Beauty & The Geek. I love this show, but CW is blowing it online. Last week the episode was missing the last two minutes. They have a preview of the next week's episode that never got updated. It is updated now, but the episode isn't and it's been two days. C'mon, CW. Make me like you!

So far Discovery has the smoothest interface and CBS has the buggiest/most likely to suck.

Shows to watch if you haven't? Kid Nation. 40 kids from 8-14 put in a western town that was abandonned and left to do things on their own. They have a town council made up of 4 members (all kids) who showed leadership qualities (kinda. One is an eagle scout, but this bratty turd of a 10 year-old girl is a beauty queen...she sucks). The kids were split into four teams each with a council member as their captain. The show really has tested the kids in making choices between what a kid would want and what the town needs to survive. Each week there is a competition to decide a couple things.

1) it decides the hierarchy and "pay". Upper class gets $1 each and they have no real job...they can do nothing if they like or go help other teams with their jobs. Next is the merchant class. They either get $.75 or $.50 and they run the shops. There is a saloon, and a general store. Third place makes you the cooks ($.25) and you're incharge of feeding the whole town...everyone tries to keep the yellow team (captained by the beauty queen turd) away from this because they barely work. Fourth place gets you a dime and you're cleaning out houses, fetching water, and anything working class.

2) if all four teams finish the challenge within a certain time they win a bonus prize for the town. It's always a choice too...the choice between something kid like and something the town needs. I think the first one was between a TV and 7 extra outhouses. Next was between a huge water slide or an in-town water supply (they have to walk way up to a pump right now)...they didn't all finish in time so they didn't get either. Next was between a microwave and a supply of hot chocolate or a pizza party...the council chose the microwave and the kids hated them for it.

There is a journal the council members read that talks of the failures of the original town settlers who couldn't make the town work and what might make it better. Like establishing a curfew (which they did and the kids actually appreciated it).

This week was about religion. They were going to institute a full town religious ceremony that would allow everyone to bring their religions together. The kids didn't want it because they said everyone would just argue and there have been wars over religious differences. This 9 year old says we don't have to focus on the differences, we can focus on what they share in common. No one listened. He decided to go person to person and take a survey of who was what religion...a 9 year old. And he knew his stuff. He'd ask someone their religion and they might say "Jewish". He would reply "Orthodox or Progressive". They ended up having a non-force gathering that wasn't driven by the council, but put together by another girl. Instead of saying they needed to be there she went and told everyone "this is happening and we'd like you to come, but only if you want to."

These kids are pretty amazing. Also, they are kids sometime. It is hilarious to watch the homesick ones go to the saloon and expressly say "I gotta go to the saloon and get a rootbeer to take my mind of my troubles." Kids doing shots of soda, chugging bottles...hilarity.

Watch that show. It's available online at cbs.com.