By Kathryn Ware
This installment of “What I Watched Last Night” should really be called “What I Didn’t Watch Last Night But Recorded on My DVR to Watch Sometime in the Next Few Years.” Yes, that’s right, years. There are programs recorded on my digital video recorder (DVR) that date back to the spring of 2005. Allow me to explain.
I live in a household of three distinct TV-watching personalities. If the three of us were to be illustrated by a Venn diagram, the littlest segment at dead center, where the three circles meet, would represent the sole regularly recorded program we all have in common: The Office. A slightly larger fraction of the recorded programs are enjoyed by a pair of us, but definitely not by the third. And the lion’s share of the DVR is taken up by a wildly divergent hodge-podge culled from all that our Comcast cable provider has to offer, recorded for individual viewing.
Our DVR is a constant juggling act of disc space and couch time. We’re forever flirting with the 100% maximum capacity mark, which for us represents dual tuners packing 120 GB of storage – that’s 60 hours of standard or 15 hours of HD programming. Some of us watch our shows promptly and remove them immediately. One of us likes to record everything in HD and why not? It looks great. The trouble with that is it makes for a heck of a lot of TV to keep up with on a weekly basis. With space at a premium, there’s no luxury of rolling over into the next week. You’ve got to keep up. We have our priorities.
And then, there’s a member of the household who if given a DVR quadruple the size of our current recorder could max it out in less than two weeks. There are movies in cold storage on the DVR that have been waiting for years to be recorded off onto the VCR, that ancient technology once held so dear and now gathering dust. As slick a set-up as we have (including a Sony PlayStation that we use to watch beautiful, vivid Blu-ray DVDs with visuals and sound even better than our beloved HD) we can’t manage to get the DVR and the VCR to communicate. I think it’s the VCR’s way of getting back at us for dumping it years ago.
So, I thought it might be fun to spin back through time to see just what’s archived on the most popular appliance in my house. This reverse chronological list clearly highlights the split personality currently residing on my DVR:
Recorded in June 2008:
* Deadliest Catch – Another season of crab fishing in the Bering Sea has begun recently on the Discovery Channel. It’s the only reality program I follow and I’m thoroughly hooked.
* Tina in Mexico – A portrait of photographer and political activist Tina Modotti.
* Big Girl’s Blouse – Sketch comedy from the creators and stars of Kath and Kim, Australia’s answer to Absolutely Fabulous. Friends of mine who lived in Australia for a while turned me on to this series. Once I cracked the Australian accent and lingo, I was a fan. Catch it yourself before they massacre it on American TV this fall with Molly Shannon and Selma Blair in the title roles. And in the meantime, there’s always BGB on the Sundance Channel.
* Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! – This Cartoon Network sketch comedy series (part of Adult Swim) is rude, crude, and fall-off-the-couch hilarious. (Seriously, I screened an episode for a friend of mine who’s a fellow Kids in the Hall fan and she exploded in laughter and fell off the couch.) Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim are the mad geniuses behind the show with cameo appearances by John C. Reilly, Michael Cera, David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Jeff Goldblum, Rainn Wilson, and “Weird Al” Yankovic. It defies description. Seeing is believing.
Recorded in May 2008:
* Robot Chicken – Another Adult Swim comedy gem that’s guaranteed to offend. Absolutely nothing is sacred and every pop culture parody is spot-on. It’s twisted, bizarre, sharp and created entirely with stop motion animation. Barbie dolls and action figures like you’ve never seen them before.
* Lost (season finale) – I gave up on this program in the middle of season 2. I hear it’s gotten good again but whenever I catch an episode, I’m reminded what a relentless downer Lost really is. I gave up on 24 for the very same reason.
* 20% Fed. Adm. Tax – “Short film (from 1953) that was produced by the motion-picture industry to be shown to a Congressional committee that was debating whether to lower a tax on gross ticket sales.” One of many odd, eclectic short films that Turner Classic Movies uses as filler.
* Nova: Lord of the Ants – Profile of Pulitzer prize-winning biologist E.O. Wilson. Narrated by Harrison Ford.
* Big Girl’s Blouse – Another episode of the Aussie sketch comedy.
* 36 Hours (1964) – WWII melodrama starring James Garner and Rod Taylor.
* Resisting Enemy Interrogation (1944) – Oscar-nominated documentary starring Arthur Kennedy and Mel Torme. Who knew?
* Ugly Betty – Season finale.
* Crapshoot: The Gamble With Our Wastes (2003) – “A revealing look at how potentially toxic waste from sewers can end up above ground, on farms and in the food chain.” Another feel-good documentary.
* Forensic Files: Time Will Tell (Albert Walker Case) – I have no idea.
* Good Eats – Food Network poster boy Alton Brown discusses all things nuts.
* Police Chases – Don’t ask me.
* Big Girl’s Blouse.
* Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! – Dr. Steve Brule rules!
* Angel on My Shoulder (1946) – “Paul Muni plays a gangster given a reprieve from Hell, provided he’ll impersonate a judge upon returning to Earth.” Also stars Claude Rains, which is enough for me to watch it right there.
* The Office (season finale) – As with most episodes of The Office, this one will linger on the DVR for multiple viewings.
* In Short: The Quay Brothers – “A collection of nine animated shorts by identical twins Stephen and Timothy Quay.”
* Masterpiece – Part 2 of 3 of the BBC mini-series Cranford. Episode 3 was never recorded so I’ll have to rent this one on DVD.
* Big Girl’s Blouse.
* Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
* Marihuana (1936) – “Early anti-drug exploitation flick is a dopey bummer about a young woman and the tragedies that befall her after becoming involved with smoking pot.” Sounds promising.
* Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! – Episodes in this series are only 15 minutes long and tend to hang around on the DVR for a long time. You cannot watch them (or share them with friends) too many times.
Recorded in March and April 2008
* The Future is Now – “A 1955 look at government research laboratories working on new technologies, including computerized assembly lines.”
* Teenagers on Trial – “This 1955 short examines juvenile delinquency, positing reasons for the problem and offering possible solutions.” I’m seeing a definite theme here.
* The Ship That Would Not Die! (1945) – This documentary has no description. I’m thinking it’s got to be WWII-related.
* A Look Into the 23rd Century – “A behind-the-scenes peek at the making of the 1976 sci-fi adventure Logan’s Run, starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter, who are interviewed.” Having never seen the movie, I’ll pass on this.
* They’re Always Caught (1938)- “Oscar-nominated short subject examining the role of the crime laboratory in solving cases.”
Recorded in January and February 2008:
* Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender – “The Chicago Defender and its founder, Robert S. Abbott, are discussed in this documentary examining the newspaper’s history.”
* Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
* Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
* Site Specific: Las Vegas – “Italian artist Olivo Barbieri presents a unique vision of Las Vegas through aerial photography.”
* Miracle Money (1938) – “This entry in the ‘Crime Does Not Pay’ series tells of medical quacks who swindle money out of unsuspecting patients by diagnosing them with cancer and offering them a bogus cure.” Turner Classic Movies is worth every penny of the cable bill for these great short films alone.
Up next, traveling back in recorded time from 2007 to 2005.
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See Kathryn Ware’s fantabulous review of the debut season of Maude, as well as the rest of the What I Watched Last Night collection.
Posted on June 6, 2008