I consider myself to be a person of great taste when it comes to television watching. I don’t get a cable feed into my own home, so I befriend fellow Lost fans so I can watch at their homes, and reconciled with Birmingham partially for the friendship, and partially for the chance to watch Battlestar Galactica on Fridays. I’ve Nexflixed Six Feet Under, House, Heroes, Big Love, Extras, Arrested Development, and most recently Flight of the Conchords. I like to stream 30 Rock and The Office over a bowl of Ramen noodles on quiet nights.

My theory is that if a blogger I like recommends a show (and it’s not reality), then into the queue it goes.

I think all those shows are of the highest quality and we’re in a bit of a television golden age right now, even though American Idol and CSI: Wherever continue to enjoy high ratings.

I wasn’t always such a discerning consumer.  When I was in junior high, I planned my days around what show was on, and watched television from the time I got home from school until the time I went to bed. If the show was good enough to make it to the air, then I watched it.  When the TV Guide new fall season issue would come out, I’d pour through it to find out what I’d be invested in during the coming year, so I could schedule my day.

And what were my favorite shows in the 80’s and 90’s?  I know that it would be cool to say Dukes of Hazzard, The A-Team, and Miami Vice.  But those shows did not interest me.  And as for cartoons, I did not like The Smurfs.  I much preferred their less popular cousins, The Snorks.  (And I only just remembered that show during the section of The Butterfly Technique about snorkels, when it dawned on me how The Snorks got their name.  Yes, I’m slow.)

Some shows I watched could be considered embarrassing, but they’ve entered the realm of ironic, because we all secretly watched and loved them.

For instance, if I were to say, “I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so… scared!”

or “now we do the dance of joy!”

or “Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho”

Most of you would be all, “Saved By the Bell!  Perfect Strangers!  Pee-Wee’s Playhouse!” because those shows are cool in an acceptably dorky way.

And while those were on my to-do list, I also spent a lot of time watching unacceptably dorky shows like Mr. Belvedere, Just the Ten of Us and Family Matters, before it became Urkel-centric. (Just to name 3 of the quarter dozen shows I never missed.)  In fact, looking back through the Wikipedia TGIF page, I’m saddened to remember that Full House, Step By Step and (sigh) Dinosaurs also got a share of my time, until I outgrew them sometime in high school, when my tastes started to change, and I even spent some time leaving the house and attempting a social life (which mostly had to do with marching band practice.)

This morning, something triggered a memory of the show Head of the Class, another show I loved, and I remembered how badly I used to wish was in an accelerated learning class, instead of being a solidly B+ student.  And I remembered the plot line of the girl who was in the remedial class, but it turned out she was just bored because she was so smart.  So despite her disciplinary problems, she got to be in Howard Hessman’s class, who was obviously the best teacher because he took a flower truck to work every day in the opening credits.  Then I remembered how when I was a student, I wished that all the boredom I felt in class was actually because I was secretly a super-genius, and all I needed was for one person to notice.

Of course I never put it together that if I had spent a little less time watching Double Dare, and a little more time watching Jeopardy! (or nothing at all), maybe I could have been a super-genius, and a star athlete to boot.  But we’ll never know, because watching Growing Pains was so much more enjoyable.