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Marta Hepler Drahos

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April 18, 2011

Marta Hepler Drahos: Television candy

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS mdrahos@record-eagle.com

You know those comfort foods? The ones like meat loaf, mashed potatoes and mac-and-cheese?

There are comfort TV shows, too. Mine are “Wheel of Fortune,” “Dancing With the Stars” and “The Bachelor” (or “Bachelorette”).

Sure, they’re brain candy (and my guilty pleasures).

But like any candy — or mashed potatoes or mac-and-cheese — they make me happy.

They cheer me up when I’m in a bad mood. They don’t require anything of me, which is what I need when I come home from work.

And they can always be counted on to stay the same, like a chain hotel or restaurant.

Ordinarily I’m a discriminating audience. I prefer weighty dramas to sitcoms, independent and foreign films to Hollywood’s mainstream movie formulas.

I support my local public radio station and orchestra and community theater.

But when it comes to these three shows — make that four, including “American Idol” — I lose all perspective.

Maybe it’s because of the way cable has changed television, giving us more channels and options than ever before.

Now that I have choices, I don’t seem to want to make any. Or maybe it’s because television now has three or four “seasons” instead of one, all with new shows, new plots and new characters to have to get to know.

It’s entertainment overload, and the thought of watching all those pilots and premieres to see if anything sticks is as exhausting as meeting a bunch of strangers at a party.

Which is just as well, since recent studies suggest that entertainment overload can do everything from divert you from what’s important to keeping you from getting a good night’s sleep.

And I get little enough sleep as it is.

No, I prefer the good old days when you had three or four network favorites like “MASH” or “St. Elsewhere” or “Northern Exposure” (oh, to be transported again to that Alaska town of Cicely).

When they aired just once a week and you could tell the days by them.

When the dialogue was more important than the soundtrack.

And when you watched them on TV and not your computer screen (or some smaller device).

So now I’m sticking to my movie channels and the few TV shows I still know.

The ones with that familiar flavor — even if it is candy.

Reach Staff Writer Marta Hepler Drahos at mdrahos@record-eagle.com.

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