P has just finished a week of SAT’s so had the time to come for a walk earlier with Winston. Chatted about a variety of things – including Scrubs – and also found great place for some pics. Some huge boulder sized stones which she sat on and I fired away. They are good but not as good as I would have liked – tremor and lighting being the problems. So as this weekend we’ll do it again in the time before sunset. I also agreed to watch some TV later (rare event – I usually work past her (late) bedtime. Bedtime? Wrong word – she goes bed when she is tired. Never have seen the point in a ‘bedtime’. Why send someone to bed to go to sleep when it’s plain they are not tired? Pointless. That said, the deal is they get up and go school regardless. That works.)

I loved Cheers. It formed an essential part of my learning the art of sarcasm (Rebecca could never pull it off as effectively as Diane) and it was the only US comedy that I actually found funny. Not just amusing but actually LOL. According to wikipedia there were 269 episodes and I’d love to see them all again. Other US comedies I just didn’t get. Some lines seemed so forced you could tell the huge writing team had sweated for it and just to be really sure the audience knew how hard they worked they threw a laughter track at it. I would talk about how John Cleese and Connie Booth wrote Fawlty Towers, or Curtis / Atkinson / Elton who brought us Blackadder. 5 people, two extremely successful series. And then came the one I hate with a passion.

We have all seasons of it and if DVD’s could be worn out these would have been. P has seen them so many times I swear I could give her a line of dialogue and she could tell me which episode, which character, what happened just before / after and a precis of the full episode. I absolutely hate Friends. From the first bars of the opening track – which I used to like before it was hijacked – to the last credit I abhor everything in between. It’s just plain horrible. I fail to see how anyone can find it even amusing. Scripted and scripted again. The ‘perfect’ people in it with the perfect this that and the other. It’s all so freaking (the new family-friendly swear word here. I still prefer the alternative – it has passion. While we were out I said to P that my boots were pretty cool now I’d worn them in. Apparently it is sooo old to say ‘cool’ now. I checked on ‘awesome’ and that was ruled out. The phrase in vogue right now is ‘hip-hop fresh’. I tried but that just does not trip off the tongue. Seems so wrong. While I’m on the subject, I played Advance Wars on the Nintendo DS. Was it about a year ago that ‘word’ was the .. word .. for something? Or two years? I never got that one. But that is used in Advance Wars – which instantly both dates the game and makes it clear the demographic they were aiming at. Bad move.) predictable. There is nothing interesting happens and the love thing? Crap – that’s like those coffee ads we had here. If Friends had been so short maybe it would have had more depth. Given the choice between replying to support tickets that would take twice as long or sit through one episode of Friends I’ll take the tickets every single time.

So when the girls started watching Scrubs I was dubious. We bought the Season sets and when we did they would both sit through them laughing constantly. But as I’m moving past the TV I catch the odd line, see something happen and I would laugh. I’d even stop and watch a few minutes. Not bad for the first US comedy since Cheers. So while out with Winston P finally got me to agree to watch Scrubs from the very start. Work felt good today so I stopped at 10 (or maybe 11, I forget) and we watched the first DVD (of 4) of season 1. Excellent. Very funny but not stupidly so. It didn’t feel so over-scripted and false and contrived as Friends. It had no laughter track (a ‘live TV audience’ is still a laughter track). I didn’t look at the credits and I don’t actually care if more people wrote it because the overall package that is Scrubs is really good. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve probably seen a lot of bits of lots of episodes so I’ll now be able to flesh them out. I think P is looking for a DVD a day. Which probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.