It’s a great time to get by without cable.
When I first moved to New York City I had few possessions. I was sleeping on the floor by night and playing solitaire and listening to internet radio courtesy or an errant wifi signal by day. It was also the dead of winter, and I had no job. I would have killed to have had cable, let alone an actual television in which to watch the cable programming. At the time, my day was spent online going from media outlet to media outlet looking for whatever content had been uploaded for streaming the night before. I watched everything The Daily Show posted (which amounts to most of the good bits from the show), listened to just about every Terry Gross interview of the 21st century (and many of the 20th’s as well), and checked out whatever video-of-the-day was popular at CNN. There was enough content to keep me from going crazy, but hardy enough to stay entertained (that’s why I’d go to Barnes and Noble and read graphic novels without paying for them — devilish!).
Today, things have shifted in favor of the poor-kid with broadband. Even without cable television, there’s enough video online right now to completely pass as a TV junkie, and I’m not just talking about YouTube. There’s more on internet TV (and cartoons) by clicking below…
Almost all of the major networks, and several cable channels, have launched video sites featuring whole, uncut episodes of some of their shows. Through ABC you can get recent Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, and Desperate Housewives among others. CBS’s new portal InnerTube is promising uncut CSIs et al later this fall. FOX is also in the game but is using its recently acquired MySpace empire as the distribution method.
But as far as an unemployed twenty-something is concerned, no site can deliver the high-profile goods like Adult Swim’s new Adult Swim Fix. What’s so great is the fact that not only do they post the recent premieres but it seems to be the one web-arm of a television network that is actively trying to compete with digital cable’s on-demand services. Right now, Adult Swim Fix not only has the most recent Metalocalypse, Venture Brothers, Tom Goes To the Mayor episodes, but it currently has posted entire seasons of Venture Brothers and Home Movies. While it may be true that watching thirteen episodes of anything in front of a computer is patently undesirable, there is a certain comfort in knowing that the material is there, and that its free, and that its legal.
Though it might be a good thing that this content wasn’t available in the winter of 2004, or I may still be unemployed, eyes bloodshot and sitting in front of this damn monitor.
It doesn’t hurt that Venture Brothers is easily one of the most entertaining series on these days. In fact, as I was watching last night’s episode (which featured the ghost of Abraham Lincoln trying to stop a presidential assassination — and kissing another man) it dawned on me that the single greatest moment (and I mean “moment†— there isn’t enough value placed of those things that are fleeting) in television each week has to be the last 30-seconds of any particular Venture Brothers episode. The series, which unlike a lot of the current Adult Swim lineup, actually tries to tell stories. In those last seconds of the episode, where things are being wrapped up (for better or for worse), we’re slapped with a title-card proclaiming the name of the episode which is presented over a kick-ass James Bond-esque music cue before fading into the credits. It’s hardly a subtle moment from hardly a subtle show, but in a way its the perfect wrap up to the weekend. There you are, sitting in your underwear on a Sunday night at 11:24pm, dreading the coming week but still finding time to laugh at the on-screen hi-jinx, when suddenly this horn-section comes in topping whatever it was that had you laughing in the first place. And you sit there staring at the screen with that dumb expression on your face and you read the credits and suddenly you’re thinking, “Yeah, I have those reports due on Tuesday, but that’s a whole day away, dammit. Everything is going to be fine.”
I’m not saying Venture Brothers is going to solve the problems of the world, but I am saying that those last thirty seconds every week might be the ultimate piece of punctuation on a sometimes random seeming television spectrum.
And finally, thanks to Adult Swim Dot Com I was able to check out the pilot for Korgoth of Barbaria, which had been circulating for some time, and has even been played on the network if I’m not mistaken. I didn’t love it. The animation and look was good, but it was mostly boring with jokes having been executed with more precision on both Metalocalypse and Venture Brothers. The series itself I found to be kind of a Ralph Bakshi influenced work of violence and misogyny that seemed focused in the style of series it hoped to create, though meandering in tone. Of course, none of this matters as the actual series that may (or may not) be coming to Adult Swim won’t likely be there for years.
Tags: ABC, Adult Swim, CBS, Fresh Air, Internet Television, Metalocalypse, The Daily Show, Venture Brothers
