The TV MegaSite's Blog Post #116

We had company the week of March 16, so I didn't watch too much TV.  We did watch "Family Guy" with our friend, but it wasn't a very funny episode. Later we also watched "The Mentalist" and some of "Justified". Our visitor is not the type to show much emotion, so I have no idea what he thought of the shows! He's from Germany.  Most of the shows he watches are in German so I don't know them, of course.

The past two weeks, I watched some of soaps from January. I'm still very behind. I run the soap transcripts every day, but our local station didn't show Y&R Thursday and Friday due to basketball. That was really annoying because the rest of the country got the show, but not us. I have to hope a friend can eventually send me the shows on DVD so I can run the transcripts for those episodes.

Also, I haven't been able to send out the site's soap scoops newsletters... just for one reason or the other, I stayed up too late and didn't get it done, and then ended up sleeping in the next day. I will definitely send them out tonight.

I have a lot of interviews the past week or so. I should have more up soon. Check it out!  The only problem with these is that they tend to be around 7 or 8 am my time.  This coming Wednesday, we have three all at the same time, but I think we will get them covered.

I've been enjoying having all the shows back this Spring!  Unfortunately, it also means that we're getting closer to May when we know which shows will be canceled. It's a sad part of the year for TV fans. I watched 4 of the new episodes of "Warehouse 13" that are coming up in April. They are really great episodes, but now there are only 2 more left for me to watch, then the show will be over. Boo hoo!

I've been thinking a lot lately about heroes and villains, especially on TV.  The past few years, TV seems to want to give us characters that are not really "heroes" but just "protagonists" or "main characters". People that are not really good people. They would probably just say they're more realistic. But how much reality do we really want on TV?

Personally, I like TV and movies to be larger than life. If I want reality (not reality shows, which are not real), I will just go out in the world and talk to real people, or watch the news, or go on the internet. TV should be, first and foremost, entertaining. That means I want characters to be heroic and good. They can have bad guys, and the good guys can certainly have some shades of grey... but I don't want certain lines crossed.

I don't know, perhaps I'm in the minority about this. The show "Chicago PD" got renewed, so it must have gotten good ratings. I couldn't stomach it because it was about crooked cops. That's why I stopped watching "CSI: Miami" because the cops got worse and worse.  It really does depend on the show, though.

There was a show years ago that starred Simon Baker and some other fine actors as jewel thieves and other "bad guys". I didn't watch it for more than one episode even though I liked the actors. I didn't want to see charming guys that kill people. I don't mind a show like "Leverage" where they used to be bad guys, but now they're doing good things. None of them were killers (well, maybe Elliot, but he was a soldier).

I don't mind cartoon bad guys or ones who are more like comic book heroes, like "Dexter". Besides, that was a comedy. Dexter did kill people, but he only killed bad guys (at least until near the end of the series - LaGuerda was an exception) and he tried hard to be a good person. Even though Simon Baker's character in "The Mentalist" is not a strict good guy, all of the other people around him are, and Jane is definitely seen as someone who is not normal.  Even when he wanted to kill Red John, it was understandable because the guy had killed his wife and kid.  He didn't start out the show killing someone and then going, "Oh, well". Things have to be done in context, and in character. We have to get to know the character first, and like that person, before they do bad things, and then they better not be a cop or otherwise abusing their power.

I think we all still want heroes because why have shows like "Once Upon a Time" where Prince Charming is always a hero (he definitely makes mistakes sometimes) and the bad guys are sometimes not so bad.  It's good to have grey characters, but they'd better not cross a certain line. We don't mind "evil" characters becoming less evil, but we don't really want our "heroes" to be too tarnished.

At least I don't. You may think differently. I never watched "Breaking Bad" or "The Shield" because to me they were not shows that had people I could root for.  What do you think? Email me about it or post on our Talkin' TV group on Facebook.