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It's the eighth week of the strike by the Writers Guild of America against the movie and television studios---or as David Letterman likes to call them the "cowards, cutthroats and weasels"---and things are starting to look dire for dedicated TV junkies.
The holidays are over, the families have gone home and TV junkies everywhere will be feeling the withdrawal effects of no fresh episodes of their favorite shows any day now. It'll start when you find yourself clicking your remote channel after channel and finding nothing but lame game shows and even lamer reality shows. Your chest will tighten, your breathing will come fast and shallow and you'll break out in a cold sweat. There's no "24," there's no "Grey's Anatomy," there's no "House," there's no "CSI!" Don't panic. It's TV Junkie Withdrawal.
Gayle at the DC Metro Moms Blog described the feeling this way:
I admit it: this TV writers' strike is starting to bum me out. When it first happened, I thought, "This is good - it will give me a chance to watch all the stuff I have backlogged on TiVo." The first casualty for me was my beloved "The Office",but I have found re-runs of the show to be just as satisfying, so I was OK with it. Then, as my archived episodes of shows like "Journeyman" and "Pushing Daisies"
started dwindling - both good shows but, at an hour a pop, sometimes
hard to get to -- I started rationalizing. "I'll read more." "I'll go
to bed earlier." "Who needs TV anyway?"
*I* need TV. I miss it.
Well I'm here to give you the equivalent of a nicotine patch for your symptoms. First keep telling yourself, you can get through this. You survived that four month break of "Lost" last season, you survived all those years between "Sopranos" seasons, you survived Rory Gilmore's years at Yale, you survived the cancellation of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" for God sakes! You can survive this too. I'm here to help.
First of all there are fresh episodes coming, you just may have to break out of your viewing comfort zone and experiment. Fox is sitting pretty, not just with the anticipation of next week's premiere of the ten ton television gorilla, "American Idol," but January 13th and 14th bring the two part premiere of "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles . Along with the return of "Prison Break" and a couple more new episodes of "Bones," Fox and Simon Cowell are counting their money and chortling, "Strike? What strike?"
Today's big news was CBS's announcement that it will begin airing Showtime's romp with a serial killer, "Dexter" on February 17. As OrlandoSentinal.com reported this afternoon, the twelve episodes of the entire first season will be edited---oh, how they'll be edited!---and aired on Sundays at 10PM. It's a daring move because like "The Sopranos" and "Sex In The City" a whole lot might be lost in translation from pay cable to broadcast.
NBC's "Medium" returns with fresh episodes tonight and ABC's "Cashmere Mafia" hit the airwaves last night." Personally, I never got into "Medium" and "Cashmere Mafia" doesn't do it for me but that doesn't mean you more desperate TV junkies shouldn't tune in.
Finally, one secret weapon in the writer's strike: PBS. Next week "Sundays with Jane" gets underway on "Masterpiece Theatre." It's a series of new productions of Jane Austen's more well know novels. The first production is "Persuasion."
So next week there will be some relief, but until then, here's how I'm coping. First, I've cleared out my own DVR of fresh, unwatched programming. For example, Ken Burns' seven parts of "The War,"---an amazing documentary. All my backlogged episodes of "Everest: Beyond The Limit"---what can I say, I'd never do it, but I love watching all those crazies pay $65,000 to risk ending up a Popsicle in "The Death Zone." And finally all my backlogged episodes of "Ugly Betty"---I live for scenes with Vanessa Williams.
Second, New Year's weekend, there was a marathon of the entire fifth season of "24" on Superstation WGN and I recorded it all. That will be rationed through the long strike tainted months ahead.
If you too have depleted your DVR, you should check out some classic shows you might have missed the first time around. If you didn't happen to have the foresight to copy that "24" marathon, rent or better yet buy, the first season of "MI-5." It stars the very hot Matthew Macfadyen from
