I Catch Up on tv

My Tivo is overweight. It has been stuffed to the gills with season finales and Masterpiece Theatres and stuff I recorded when Showtime had a preview weekend. It has belched up daily episodes of Oprah and Martha Stewart with small sighs of relief, only to turn right around and chow down on special super-sized finales and season 4 of the Amazing Race (on GSN). My Tivo has stretch marks, y'all, and it is maybe cussing me and my busy schedule and my exam-writing and my book-reading and my internetting.

But as of today, my Tivo has had some drastic reduction surgery. That's right; I have finally slogged through everything I've recorded over the last two weeks.

Let me discuss:

1. The Office
I cannot say enough how much I love this show. If I said the word, "LOVE," 4689075609875350698 times, it could not convey the depth of my devotion and adoration. I laughed all the way through the episode, and then I cried for the entire last ten minutes. THAT is some good television, right there.

2. Veronica Mars
I was shocked out of my skull; I had no idea what was coming, and I am, I guess, terrible at guessing things. Because I was completely taken by surprise. I like it when they do that. Also, more tears.

3. Bleak House
This was one of the Masterpiece Theatres. It was actually rerun, because I missed it the first time. But it was really, really, really good. It reminded me of why "the Canon" (cursed by the self-loathing white male literary academians) actually is ... the Canon. I think people think of Charles Dickens as sort of a light-weight, sometimes, because of A Christmas Carol, but that man could WRITE. He was very good at characterization, especially. Amazing performances, outstanding settings, and a fantastic story as the foundation. Also, I cried.

4. Texas Ranch House
I sort of felt obligated to watch this, given my membership in Nerds-r-Us; I have loved all of the other "House" series, but this one was just subpar in every way. I think it began with the casting. The people who sign up for these shows just aren't in it for the right reasons, I think, and it tends to show up during the course of the series. I watched the whole thing in one day and by the end, I sort of hated everybody associated with it. That is not what I've come to expect from PBS, actually, and I am frankly disappointed that a publicly-funded, supposedly educationally-minded corporation would try to recreate The Real World, when I really just wanted to know how ranchers lived in 1867. Too much drama; not enough facts.

5. Under the Greenwood Tree
Another Masterpiece Theatre production, this one based on the novel by Thomas Hardy. Given my own experience with Hardy, I fully expected this to be a sixteen-part series, but they cut a bunch of stuff out, stuck with the main plot, and it clocked in at a mere hour and thirty minutes. I thought it was very well-done; the only thing was, the guy who played Jeff on Coupling (UK) portrayed a parson, and I just could not get over that.

6. Prison Break
Okay, how hard did I laugh when the plane left without them?

7. My Name Is Earl
I probably liked it; I generally do. But it came on the same night as The Office, so I don't really remember much about it.

8. CSI
Technically, not the finale. But it sets up the finale, and also it was on the Tivo for several days, so I'm counting it. If Brass dies, Jerry Bruckheimer will be getting a nasty letter from me, and I won't be spelling out the bad words with asterisks either.

9. Junebug
This has been on the Tivo forEVER, and I recorded it because Amy Adams was nominated for the Oscar and I wanted to see if she deserved it. (Answer: yes). If you want to know what it's like to live in a small Southern town, see this film. It was spot-on in its characterization, in the small events that seem like a huuuuuuge deal, in the occasional claustrophobia you feel when you've been there too long, the way it depicted how your personal business is everyone else's business too, in how your history is written in stone, even if you've lived somewhere else for fifteen years and become a totally different person.
No tears, but there probably would have been if I hadn't been turning the heel on my sock.

10. Grey's Anatomy, parts 1 and 2
Tears tears tears tears tears tears
Also, yelling at the tv, calling people names, fast-forwarding past the dog, shaking my head in disbelief, wanting to be like Bailey, and hating hating hating Derek Shepherd.
And then more crying.

So it's been a busy week for my Tivo and my tear ducts and me. We are exhausted.