There are many things I don't understand. So it's almost futile to try and enumerate them, except in a few egregious instances. That I don't understand them is not wholly complete. I hate them--I passionately dislike them--and I can't remain in a room where they are. In many cases, these days, I'm grateful that I downloaded various games onto both my cell phone and my iPod. (As I've mentioned, I have a Touch because I have way too much music to fit on a phone. For a myriad of incoherent reasons, I don't have a true iPhone and this is one is the most vindicating, although a Touch is simply an iPhone without the calling capacity.) When the Winter Olympics or Two and a Half Men comes on and someone else wants to watch, I retreat to that before I remove myself altogether.
Mostly this is because MS hinders my true intention, which is to shoot out of the room. Eventually, though, I can't stand any more Bob Costas or Charlie Sheen, and have to leave somehow. Occasionally I find myself stuck in a living room that I can't escape, and I have to endure the hackneyed commentary of the former or the banal dialogue of the latter.
The Olympics don't really assault my sensibilities. I just find them boring as shit. Who the hell wants to watch white people brave the daunting snow and/or slide on skates? This is my way of saying that they're mildly racist. Of course there are black athletes, but you never think of one's name. There is nowhere where this is more apparent than figure skating, which has been the butt of many jokes but mostly this concentrates on sexual orientation more than race.
Wait--that's not true, because actually it's very perceptible in every sport. Similarly, whoever prefers The Sopranos to The Wire is a racist, I'm convinced, however faint their racial biases are. The Wire is so much better, and The Sopranos was based on the earth-shattering (sarcasm again), trite premise of a mobster in therapy. It's not bad, though, especially in comparison to a piece of shit like Two and a Half Men.
The glib quips of jackasses like Charlie Sheen and Jon Cryer (the "Two" in the title) are met with canned, fake audience laughter that only highlights how unfunny they are. I'm not totally averse to laugh tracks, mind you, because Seinfeld and a few other great shows of the past had them. I suspect, too, that a studio executive insisted on them, much like Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall protests while someone at a soundboard inserts the sounds of an audience's laughs.
That only becomes noticeable when the script is unfunny. I nearly forgot that Seinfeld had one because it was funny. Two and a Half Men is not. I know that various protests may lie in the subjectivity of humor, but in this case the show is objectively unfunny. Charlie Sheen swirls the ice cubes around in a tumbler of whiskey, mutters an inane comment, and the audience laughs, against their better judgment. Jon Cryer says something patently unhip, and the audience laughs. The fat kid says something--anything, and the more incredulous the better--and the audience laughs. This wouldn't be a problem if any of these things were funny, but they aren't.
I know I run the risk of being labeled a snob, but anyone who lobs that insult perfunctorily would never know what that means--"perfunctorily," to clarify. Also, they're dumb enough to watch Two and a Half Men voluntarily and regularly, so their opinion holds no sway with me.
I really don't care. That shows sucks unremittingly. Objectively.
R
