In this thread, we catch sarahel up on what has happened on TV since 1997

- you can say "bitch" and "ass" now

- if you are into watching drunk women with implants get in fights and spit at one another, you are in for a treat

- programming involving Tyra Banks is way more readily available than in the past

- not all gay tv characters have aids

- crimes are now solved by absurdly good looking scientists

- the guys on Wings found a bunch of money their father had left for them

- Sam Waterston got a promotion on Law & Order, because the DA ran for president

- shows about fake families with surprising numbers of children have given way to shows about real families with ditto

-but then the wings dudes got in a knife fight over the money, brian didn't come out so well :/

http://mzyrianova.com/images/PartyDownsmall.jpg

I haven't really watched tv regularly since 1991 guys! In 1997 I only watched Melrose Place re-runs with my roommate.

stuff kept happening on the x-files and then it didn't

- if you think you can dance, sing, cook, model, design clothing, or groom pets, there is a show for you

(sarahel we can't change tack and go back to 1991 now, just take notes on this last decade and fake it from there)

- this high-up mob guy in New Jersey went to therapy, which may or may not have been as interesting as a bunch of stuff happening in Baltimore

yeah I watched the Baltimore one on DVD, also the one about the family that owned a funeral home with a gay son who then went on to be a serial killer in Florida.

- there's this guy called Jimmy Fallon, he's sort of awkward and unfunny but at least he looks like someone who could be on TV

- a bunch of humans fled a bunch of not-humans who were actually humans but not really humans even through they were human, and they had a plan, but didn't

'through'? 'though' etc.

Those dudes in prison did, finally, in the end, break out of prison

If you look like you could belong to two or more ethnicities, have I got a job for you

- a plane crashed

- Kathy Lee Gifford is on at the end of the Today show now, whereas Regis broadcasts with this new thing called Kelly

- possibly the best late-night host is a Scottish guy in an empty room making jokes about how he used to be an alcoholic

xp Ned: V and V the Final Battle came out in the 80s. I did see those.

- There's this bakery in New york that makes really good cupcakes

V is coming back again so you can pick up where you left off.

They changed the rules on Jeopardy! and this one dude won for something like six months straight.

is Vanna White still around?

- people watch new shows on cable now, and, uh, theyre good

- Tony Shaloub, whom you probably remember as "Antonio from Wings," now plays a genius detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder

Some people discovered plastic surgery and some other people discovered steroids and HGH.

Vanna -- YES!

- There's this guy called Jack Bauer, and he hasn't got time to argue with you, dammit.

- there are these guys called "Mythbusters" who investigate minor scientific conundrums and then throw together a reason to blow something up

Max, why do you lie. They watch them via torrents.

- I am really sorry to break this to you but Craig Kilborn is no longer the host of the Daily Show

wings was a v. important show

What's the Daily Show?

In this thread, sarahel exhibits ignorance of tuomas-like proportions, but has no excuse, not being from Finland.

this thread is to bring you up to speed; take notes for later; there will be a quiz

It started out as a nightly version of "Weekend Update" from SNL and turned into the only thing keeping a bunch of Democrats from killing themselves for a few years. Now it's both, I guess?

- if you weren't watching TV because you were frustrated by the lack of visual definition, hold on to your hat

- There's this show about the 60s. Turned out people smoked and were sexist back then.

- there was this show about the 70s. turned out it was a fun time to be a teenager and goof on your friends

xp: I think I saw it ... the Dick Van Dyke show?

- a couple of shows about how awesome/conflicting it was to be a teen in the 70s have come and gone; one launched a bazillion movie careers and the other got Demi Moore laid by a hot ex-model from Iowa

xp: DAMMIT NABISCO

haha I actually don't know what the other 70s show you have in mind is!

oh, never mind -- Freaks & Geeks was early-80s, I think, but I gotcha

Dammit I wanted to suggest other names to Nabisco

- there's a whole network that's just kinda random cheapish stoner animation humor for most of the evening

- there's a commercial for a lady razor that shows various bushy plants magically contracting into neat circles, triangles, or landing strips

xp re: psychic landscaper: Is this the Michael Landon one, or something else?

- ghosts prove strangely interested in the location of missing children, baked goods

Ricki Lake lost a bunch of weight between Hairspray and getting her talk show in the 90s. Is she thinner now?

Sarahel WORK WITH US here, we are trying to catch you up on over a decade of TV and it is unlikely that we are accidentally thinking of something that happened in the late 80s

Okay, I'll try. I just wanted to know if Ricki Lake got even thinner post-95?

she now hosts one of those shows about drunk chicks who get in fights and spit at each other, and occasionally makes this face:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Ricki_Lake_LF.JPG/388px-Ricki_Lake_LF.JPG

tbh i wouldve guessed it was unlikely anyone was thinking about ricki lake at all

- There hasn't been a British sitcom to top Father Ted, though Peep Show might come close.

yeah, she has lost more weight!

THAT'S WHAT I AM TELLING YOU

- The Real World done CHANGED

- if you have a headache, apply head-on directly to the forehead

- kids get raped basically all the time in nyc except in the summer

- public access television is still awesome

- there is a show where you can trade your wife for another family's wife, but only if your families are comically different (e.g. they run a Christian family puppet show and you are Satanists)

- college of choice for good looking young ppl with tumultuous lives is now yale

THAT'S WHAT I AM TELLING YOU

Sorry, I just wanted clarification, so I don't make embarrassing mistakes on a potential quiz question about Ricki Lake.

You know: Ricki Lake's dramatic weight loss vs. Ricki Lake continued her dramatic weight loss ...

- if anyone knows who you are and you need some money, you can have a cable show where camera crews follow you around on staged activities

A 50 year old rapper was on a Vh1 reality tv show where he fell in love with Sylvester Stallone's ex-wife. This situation led to him getting various reality tv show spin offs dedicated to his romantic life. One of the girls from one of those shows then got her own reality tv show, and then two of the guys from her reality tv show got their own reality tv show.

- if u want to u can find out how widgets are made

never really noticed it in the 90s, but ricki lake is one jewish broad, isn't she?

- mid-90s now a source of real longing and nostalgia

- there's a whole multi-season show of a guy trying to explain to his kids how he and their mother met, and possibly also why he started to talk like Bob Saget at some point after that happened

- Doogie Howser is on it and all famous and well-loved again

- in the wake of the iraq war semi-popular cartoon character general traag launches an influential and considered panel-discussion show about foreign affairs

- it is proven that if a plane tried to take off from a giant treadmill which was going the opposite direction of the plane at the same speed, the plane takes off

- Fred Savage, meanwhile, directs

- if u want to u can find out how widgets are made

― Lamp, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 5:23 PM (40 seconds ago)

I just realized that "How It's Made" is the grownup equivalent of those videos of dumptrucks and steamshovels they make to mesmerize little kids.

- this fictional woman ran away from her rich parents during her teenage pregnancy and raised her precocious child in a bucolic and quirky little town in Connecticut, where they ate loads of junk food but never got fat, possibly due to the energy expenditure of talking a LOT

- the Superbowl halftime show is still boring except for that one time when you could see janet jackson's jug

also that one time when Prince played

- if u wander home drunk and high @ 2 am and turn on the teevee theres a pretty good chance u will happen upon a 15 minute stop-motion cartoon about hopelessness and child abuse dedicated to the l8 john cassavettes. your digital cable will claim its a comedy

- you missed the entire eventful administration of President Bartlett

- this fictional woman ran away from her rich parents during her teenage pregnancy and raised her precocious child in a bucolic and quirky little town in Connecticut, where they ate loads of junk food but never got fat, possibly due to the energy expenditure of talking a LOT

^^^ kind of covered this one, thanx for reading

2 terms!
xp

- this fictional woman ran away from her rich parents during her teenage pregnancy and raised her precocious child in a bucolic and quirky little town in Connecticut, where they ate loads of junk food but never got fat, possibly due to the energy expenditure of talking a LOT

no idea what show this refers to

- it was also scientifically proven that if the Yakuza and the Mafia were ever to fight, the Mafia would win

One guy pretty much defined what superhero/comic book cartoons would look like.

oh come now, lamp, there was nothing tumultuous about Rory's life

dean and jess and rory and that douchey exeter kid

- Neighbours is now on Channel 5.

- brainy young literature professor pretends to care about his students but is actually totally muderering them one by one audience knows hes evil when he makes a chicken salad with white fish instead of chicken

ok you guys have totally lost me

- Arguably the best action cartoon series of all time aired and was cancelled prematurely on the Cartoon Network. It was called Samurai Jack, and not a lot of people watched it.

I think lamp was trying to describe House

- tax write off and occasional tv network the cw greenlights a tv series based on "clue" starring world's cutest blonde girl but it kind of falls off after the 1st season

Arguably the best action cartoon series of all time aired and was cancelled prematurely on the Cartoon Network. It was called Samurai Jack, and not a lot of people watched it.

if u have a soul rent or buy these dvds

For real, at its best it was like a psychedelic animated take on a Sergio Leone film.

there's this dude named simon cowell and if you sing bad he is gonna be really mean to you and you are probably gonna cry. also he is not gay, just british.

- a couple of divorced parents living in the chicago suburbs got together and attempted to live their lives w/ honesty and hopefulness despite pretty much all bad things happening to them or their families. their stories were artful and sincere and brave

- this fictional woman ran away from her rich parents during her teenage pregnancy and raised her precocious child in a bucolic and quirky little town in Connecticut, where they ate loads of junk food but never got fat, possibly due to the energy expenditure of talking a LOT

no idea what show this refers to

Gilmore Girls, and consider yourself fucking lucky because that show was excruciating (at least the one episode I watched of it, which was strictly to see Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo and Sparks supply the sdtk)

- the sad but overdue passing of squigglevision. also some third graders made a bunch of rad movies, their video camera pays the price