#34 | let's watch an episode of idiots
In defense of my current silly little hyper-fixation show
I’ve always loved a binge watch. I have vivid memories of laying in bed watching hours & hours of Rescue Me — sourced via Netflix DVD — during the weeks between my last college final & our graduation ceremony.
I had the DVD box set of The West Wing that I watched repeatedly via Nintendo Wii (why did I have that but not a regular DVD player?) in my first adult apartment. I’ve seen Criminal Minds and Gilmore Girls and Parks & Rec and 30 Rock from start to finish, many times. I love a Background Show!
Over the last few years, as chaos reigned & our attention spans were fighting for their lives, a new variation of Background Show has emerged — the Brainless Show.
A Brainless Show is also a Background Show, but one that requires zero energy or brain cells to process. It’s ideal for the hours between dinner & bedtime, when your focus & attention is tapped out and you just need to be a couch zombie for a bit.
Our current favorite is The Amazing Race, which may have my ideal Brainless Show formula:
Short seasons (less than 12 episodes)
Plenty of backlog seasons to watch
Each episode follows the same format
There is literally no plot to follow!
Every season has a villain to hate / an underdog to love
The cast is over-tired & stressed out leading to some unintentionally comedic moments (& plenty of opportunity to shout answers at the tv & feel superior for clearly knowing the answer even if it’s because the editing has shown us the answer through no effort or intelligence of our own)
If dinner is a bit early, we might watch an episode of something more substantive, but most weeknights we turn to each other & just say “Time for idiots?”1 and settle in for an episode or two of The Amazing Race.
We both pull out our iPads, with me playing Sudoku & Brad catching up on the news, & add our color commentary throughout the show. Then we head upstairs, get ready for bed, and turn out the lights well before 11pm.
The 16-year old version of myself would probably be horrified by this, but my current 36-year old self is quite satisfied.
To clarify — the contestants aren’t actual idiots; it’s just a term we coined to represent whichever Brainless Show we’re watching. It started with Love Island UK — another great Brainless Show — because those kiddos do actually act like idiots sometimes. There’s a Movie Night every season! Why do you remain shocked that the cameras captured you acting badly! 🤣
Matt and I did/do this with The Challenge. We started at like Season 5 (when the long-reigning host, TJ Lavin, started) and rode it out to current. Took like, a year? Now we’re all caught up so we have to find other idiots to watch. I think we will try Survivor next.
We also sometimes find time for “prestige TV” but it is so much harder to watch than the idiots lol
Yes! My partner and I have been binging Amazing Race for months and are very close to being done. I don't know what we're going to do!!