What I Gave Up On

One of the columnists over at tvguide.com did a blog on the shows that she gave up on because it was just too much to stay involved with them. Which got me thinking.

I recently gave up on Lost. It kind of killed me to do it because I really, really want to know how the whole thing ties up. I never missed an episode (except during the Sox's playoff run in 2004 because it was the FUCKING WORLD SERIES, PEOPLE). But I caught up on the reruns, got myself back together, got really involved. I was a pro Kate/Jack, thought Charlie was annoying, and wanted Locke to just shut up. I thought the hatch was stupid and Ana-Lucia was annoying. I was involved, people. I felt this show. I enjoyed it. But this season...

First, the "fall" season of the seven episodes that ran until October was all "Others" episodes. I had no vested interest in these people. And as cool as Elizabeth Mitchell is (am I the only person who thinks she looks better as a brunette? Am I the only person who saw Frequency?), I would have rather seen Kate or, my personal fave, Sayid. Anyway, it was not interesting.

Then, the uninterrupted second half of the season was just boring. Lost was strictly a TiVo gig, meaning I never watched it live any more. I would let weeks go by before I watched it. I had a ton of episodes saved up on TiVo. So I finally sat down, watched them all, and thought I was back into it. Except I wasn't. I finally deleted the unwatched episodes off the TiVo and canceled the season pass. It's just not worth it to me any more.

So what others have I walked away from? Soaps, clearly. I no longer give a crap about any of them. After making my sister tape an entire season of The X-Files while I lived in England, I didn't watch the last season or two after David Duchovny left. I tried, but the formula of the show was wrong. Scully as believer? The Liquid Terminator as the new doubting skeptic? Freakin' Annabeth Gish as the most pointless character in a television series since Elisabeth Rohm was cast first on Angel, then on Law & Order? No, my friends. It was not for me. Duchovny gave the show such a biting wit and such a presence. You believed in the crazy with him. Without him the show felt cold.

Other things I gave up? Angel. I tried, but once they made Angel's son a teenager and Cordy an evil being, I was like, "see ya." And I thought Fred was beyond irritating. I stopped watching NYPD Blue for a long time, then watched the last episode after not seeing it for years. ER, I totally can't STAND that show any more. When the hell did that show become all about Maura Tierney? I have no idea if it still is or not, but that character drove me batty when it was all about her and the crazy brother and Sally Field doing a modified Sybill. The West Wing, I stopped watching for seasons five and six, but I came back to it for season seven and I will someday rent all those episodes I missed.

What else? I gave up on Melrose Place and 90210 once it became apparent this was just craziness that was never going to end, even when it should have. A whole ton of sitcoms, but I don't consider giving those up as traumatic as giving up dramas. I was never a huge Friends fan, so not watching that for a long time was no big. I also gave up on Invasion (Omar didn't like it and wanted to watch something else). Had they really killed off Michael Vartan, I would have stopped watching Alias, but I had a feeling there was more to that story than meets the eye, so I stuck it out. They rushed the ending of that series so badly, though, that just watching the final season hurts me. JJ Abrams really did his fans a disservice when he abandoned that show so completely.

I also gave up on Profiler, The Practice, and The Sopranos. The first two just got boring, the last was just too violent for me to keep watching.

That's all that I can think of in recent memory that I walked away from recently. The X-Files killed me the most to abandon. I loved that show. It was my favorite. But it was just hard to watch something that was once so brilliant become such a shadow of itself. It was like the last season of Buffy, Alias, and this season of Lost all rolled up into one.

Anyway, I made a stir fry tonight with a kick ass sauce, but I used too much salt and pepper, I didn't have any rice, and I used some BAD zucchini so everything had a very bitter flavor to it once you bit into a zucchini. Not my best effort. Lord knows Omar ate every bite, but I think he's just trying to make me feel better because I'm having one of those low self esteem weeks.

I'm just tired, I guess. I felt fat when I bought pants this week, even though I've lost five pounds. I didn't really get a chance to go grocery shopping this week, so I didn't have the usual salad that I eat every day. I've had a sore jaw and an earache for a week so I finally broker down to see the doctor and her diagnosis was either a sinus infection putting pressure on my ear, or TMJ. I really, really want it to be a sinus infection. It definitely wasn't an ear infection because she said my ears were clear. But, even though I don't feel sick, when she touched my face under my eyes and near my nose (you know, where your sinuses are) there was A LOT of pain. It's funny because they don't hurt unless you put the slightest pressure on them. I have a feeling that it's TMJ because that's how my life works.

Work stuff is too complicated to get into. That's for another night when I'm not ready to drop from exhaustion.