My Husband’s Rant

I was intending for this to be Part III of my 2018 reflections, but you all are going to have to wait. Pat wanted a piece of this blog action, so here he is in all his glory. Enjoy!

We made our resolutions; it has been two weeks, time to be back to our lazy TV watching habits! I’m actually of the mindset that “getting in shape” and “eating better” or “losing weight” for their own sake are woefully insufficient and the primary cause of failed resolutions. I’m finding that having a palpable goal that is achieved through your resolution is a more substantive and enticing accomplishment. But that’s a different blog for another time.  Today, I’m ranting about what my wife watches on TV.

We’re actually pretty good about not watching too much TV, but every now and then when we feel like turning our brains off after putting the girls to bed, we endure each other’s TV interests.

Kathryn’s guilty pleasures: “The Bachelor” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” God help me. I know women love these shows, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that these two shows are perfectly mindless, and the plots have only slightly more depth than the storylines of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment for the uncultured). I have on many occasions been playing a mobile game or reading a book, and I can follow what is going on with these shows. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. Fair warning, from here on out there are likely some gross inaccuracies—I don’t need them pointed out. We’ll all just acknowledge now that they are there. Agreed?  Agreed.

Grey’s Anatomy I find particularly hilarious. First of all, the title should be called “Doctors Who Can’t Communicate.”  I can’t believe how many problems are created on this show because all these supposedly successful, intelligent, highly educated surgeons apparently flunked basic social skills in middle school, and high school, and college, and med school…  Their ability to routinely communicate half a thought and disappear, leaving the remaining characters to draw their own misinformed conclusions, is impressive. I also love how the dialog is written to convey a character trying their best to help, but when you see the result, all they were doing was just starting fires with the tenacity of a pyromaniac.

Some of the fun I have with this show is the ability to create nicknames, especially since I don’t remember the characters’ names, and it’s not important that I do. The show is ripe for them, but the nicknames drive Kathryn crazy, even though I’ve noticed she uses them now too. Here are just a few that I’ve come up with:

The blond lesbian: Peg-leg (It was right there and easily my favorite.)

The redheaded Christian girl: Redhead or Bullseye (The creators routinely come up with ways to ruin her life.)

The crazy army doctor: Scotsman (They should have let him use his natural accent; it’s awesome.)

The dark haired enemy of Scotsman: AJ Styles (You wrestling fans will get this.)

Meredith Grey: The not-so main character.

Despite being the title character, Not-So Main is the most curious. Half of the episodes she provides a voiceover, and we see her for roughly 1 ½ minutes. That’s it. I will say this though, for those 90 seconds she does spur the plot along its meandering path. In hindsight, her nickname probably should have been MacGuffin.

A favorite plot device is when the doctors are scrubbing in for surgery. It’s a perfect opportunity to converse while doing a mundane, but very doctory activity.  These moments usually end up with one character going into surgery providing just enough dialog to another character to create the wrong conclusion or be left with paralyzing uncertainty. Cause, you know, doctors can’t communicate. This is a perfect time for Not-So Main to inject herself into the plot line to create conflict and then disappear.

My favorite storyline right now: Skinny is pregnant with Scotsman’s kid, but he’s back with Sister-Shepherd (not my best nickname) raising a baby while also having taken in the mother of this baby who is an addict trying to get clean under the guidance of Sister-Shepherd.  I think we can make this more complicated. All we need is a cop who used to date Skinny enforcing a warrant to arrest the addict while a tsunami is racing through Puget Sound to destroy Seattle, and we’re done.

Speaking of natural disasters, I missed several seasons before being subjected to this show every Thursday, but I’ve witnessed plane crashes, earthquakes, fires, severe thunderstorms (with tornados?), explosions, blackouts, MacGyver’d surgeries, apocalyptic windstorms and more fires. I’m willing to bet my TV that the first few seasons were much the same. I didn’t realize Seattle was such a dangerous place. When they bring in a character with normal injuries, maybe from a car accident, I yawn.

Anyway, Skinny spends roughly three episodes trying to tell Scotsman she’s pregnant with his kid, and believe me, there were opportunities, but remember, she’s a doctor, so she can’t communicate. She decides that the ideal opportunity is in the middle of a complicated, life or death surgery. Of course Scotsman is rattled, and we’re left wondering if he’s going to kill the patient, because, clearly, he has other things on his mind now. By the way, I don’t want any of these people as my doctor.

I think there is also some contest to develop some new medical innovation, but all I really remember is Shorty coming up with an anal probe straight out of a sci-fi abduction story, and everyone at the presentation eating pot brownies. Okay, I was laughing aloud during that episode.

As for Shorty, I think the last time we saw her she was stressing because her husband (yeah, haven’t bothered with a nickname for him) decided to forego being a doctor to join the fire department and risk his life (and possibly his acting career if that show tanks).

By the way, where is Grey in all this? Steadfastly providing voiceovers to get us to the next episode, where we won’t receive resolution to numerous cliffhangers in the weekly primetime soap opera, “Doctors Who Can’t Communicate.”