TV Yes and No

People keep asking me what I do to fill my days, now that I’m no longer working or golfing. And the days do get long. I’m either reading or writing, or watching television. I must average six hours a day on the boob tube. I don’t have HBO or Showtime, but I do have several hundred other channels to watch. And other than sports (D-backs baseball, Suns basketball, Cardinals football, any old golf tournament that’s on), I have my favorite shows and my unfavorite shows. First, the unfavorites. I watch only one reality show, So You Think You Can Dance, and find that I can get along quite nicely without any of the others, like Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, The Amazing Race, American Idol, The Voice, The Apprentice, or any of the various Housewives of Whatever shows. Of the others, I don’t watch Criminal Minds (too psychotically icky), Law and Order, Special Victims (too psychotically yucky), Hawaii Five-O, Bones, House, Grimm, or Smash (not enough singing). I watch only one situation comedy, The Big Bang Theory, and skip all the others even though the critics rave about them. They all seem to be backed against shows I want to watch, so I never got hooked on The Office, 30 Rock, or Parks and Recreation. Nor do I watch Mike and Molly (too many fat jokes) or New Girl (just too cute). All right, so what DO I watch? My very favorites are The Closer (I’m really going to miss Brenda Lee when she’s gone), The Mentalist (love Patrick Jane), Person of Interest (love Jim Caviezel’s whispering tough guy), Blue Bloods (love the patriarchal Tom Selleck, but especially love him as Jesse Stone), and The Good Wife (although lately I’m more and more turned off by lawyers). The rest of my favorites are Harry’s Law, Glee, Missing, NCIS, CSI, Unforgettable, Touch, Rizolli and Isles (love looking at Angie Harmon), and Southland (love all the gritty L.A. cops). My days are pretty well filled up.