This Should Tell You How Much TV I Watch

Just finished watching the full season of the latest Andy Richter vehicle, Andy Barker, PI. The whole run (Only six half-hour eps so it's not too much of a viewing marathon. You have to sit through a commercial before each episode but it's from the sublime sponsorship of TurboTax and mercifully brief.), including a web-only exclusive featuring the always wonderful Amy Sedaris, is available for viewing online. I caught the premier, by accident, on the tube and in my desire to see more, I stumbled across the online episdoes.

The show itself is alright. It's no Andy Richter Controls the Universe but it's got a quirky sense of humor that I find appealing. The best part about the show is that the comedy is character driven. Subtle but biting at just the right times. I don't expect it to last very long but that's alright. The best sitcom ever, Fawlty Towers, only lasted for twelve episodes and I wish more shows would follow that model rather than hanging on to wring the last blood red cent out of syndication. Six episodes is short and sweet enough to leave me wanting more but not run the jokes and the premise into the ground.

But what's of note here is how more and more shows are being offered online like this one. My mother, for example, watches Lost (Which I bailed out on as soon as I realized the writers had absolutely no idea how to wrap up the mysteries they'd established and were just stringing things out. Went though that with X-Files and I have no interest in doing it again.) through her computer as she records another show during that time and doesn't want to stay up that late. And I get most of my passive entertainment through the computer box and not the television reciever what with all the podcast and YouTube (You can, for example, watch many classic Marx Brothers clips including Duck Soup.) clips around these days.

It really makes me think that, sooner than we all expect, the era of mass broadcasting is going to be over. I expect the movie theaters to go before the television stations but, you never know. Digital distribution and niche downloads will become the order of the day. Since I think this would also mean our already tribal culture will splinter even further, I'm not so sure it's a good thing. But it will be interesting to see.

On the other hand, you can never go wrong underestimating the lowest common denominator. And it's not like I'm very plugged into the mainstream here. For example, I thought Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader was some kind of parody joke. Not an actual hit television show. Go figure.