All the TV in the world

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

I don’t even want to think about how much I spend each month on TV and internet service. I can justify it (at least a little bit) because TV is kind of our thing we like to do as a family. At any given time, there are usually four or five shows we are working our way through and it’s not unusual for us to spend a couple of hours on a few episodes of “Supernatural” or “Big Bang Theory” or even something like “Project Runway” or “Top Chef” in an evening (or binge a whole season of something over the weekend).

Of course, we each also have “our” shows that we watch alone when no one else is available. I, for example, will blow through a whole season of a show I’ve seen dozens of times, like “The Office” or “Community” over a long Saturday of cleaning house or doing laundry just to have something on the TV. My

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daughter is working her way through “Grey’s Anatomy” and my wife is really into murder/true crime stuff on Netflix these days (on an unrelated note: if I ever go missing… just saying).

It truly is a golden age of being a couch potato. The best thing is that I have been able to introduce my daughter to the shows of yesteryear. She got into “Girl Meets World” for example, and so we sat down and watched its predecessor “Boy Meets World.”

She liked “Friends” but found the folks on “Seinfeld” to obnoxious.

The real amazing thing about all these streaming services nowadays, though, is the movies. Thanks to Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+ and such, I can basically go, “Hey, have you ever seen (literally any movie)? No? Well, let’s watch it…”

The other day, my daughter came home to tell us she had gotten a pert in her high school drama department’s production of “Grease.” So, a couple of clicks on the remote control and just like that, we were bopping along to John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and “Summer Lovin’.”

We’ve enjoyed all the movies from bygone days as they come to me, like “Princess Bride,” “The Goonies,” “Die Hard,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” — even stinkers like “Killer Klowns from Outer Space.” She seemed to at least appreciate how bad it was…