I'm a TV-watchin' guy, and Ramadan is a TV-watchin' time.
Food and drink, as you probably have ascertained by now, are a huge part of the social culture here. Our weekly plans are basically anchored by eating out and nightlife. For its observers, Ramadan is removing alcohol beverages from the equation throughout the month, while daylight is foodless. Except in home settings, adult drink is basically off limits for the rest of us as is food during daylight, leaving everybody with a lot of new time on their hands to work with. Given the 110-degree heat (give or take 8 degrees), TV is a solution for many.
The rest of this entry is for regular-to-highly-avid American TV watchers who wonder what TV life is like in a country with round-the-clock access to quite limited and random American shows from the last 25 years...plus anyone who might find the creature in the former sentence strangely fascinating.
This list is a pecking order of a smattering of television shows likely to appear on our two OSN (overlorded by Showtime) comedy channels - which earn the grand majority of my TV viewing, despite the fact that we have hundreds of other channels (more than 2/3 in foreign languages) - rated from "I'd Rather Be Outside Fasting With The Mistreated Pakistani Construction Workers" to "You Just Made My Ramadan." Also, it should be noted that there's a lot more griping than exalting to follow.
While I write this post, I don't even have to think too hard about the rankings - I watch a ton of TV, the shows that OSN seems to own the rights to is relatively limited, the programming order is completely random and there are two stations...meaning I have probably already made a Channel 398 or 399 head-to-head decision for every two of these shows.
20 Just Shoot Me - The concept was bad, the scripts were bad, David Spade killed any credibility he built during Saturday Night Live, and for the 45 seconds or less that I watch Just Shoot Me as it plays constantly in the UAE, I think: This should have been the last program ever with a laugh track. What kind of group think/old-guard mentality bullshit leads executives to think a laugh track still augments a show? It's like they're worried it doesn't shout "This Is Contrived!" loudly enough.
19 The New Adventures Of Old Christine - I think CBS has drawn a line in the sand between blue state elitests and red state mayonaisse-sandwich eaters better than any political issue over the last 11 years.
18 Hot In Cleveland - I haven't watched closely enough to know what this show is - if my choices are this or No. 19 or No. 20, then that's when I'm going to wash dishes - but if I had to guess, I'd say the pitch was Designing Women meets The Drew Carey Show combined with She's The Sheriff.
17 The Jay Leno Show - I find myself tuning in for 2-3 minutes because of its day-to-day topical nature (this type of program usually airs 1-2 days behind in the UAE), but then the total lack of cleverness in Leno's humor makes me red with anger, and I change it to The World According To Jim dubbed in Arabic or, God, anything. Leno is the show on this list that makes me the most physically angry at its popularity for the small duration that I watch it, way more so than No. 15 or No. 13. If you've ever seen the 1990 Lord Of The Flies movie, I sometimes fantasize about going Roger on Leno like he's Piggy.
16 Melissa And Joey - I change the channel after watching for a few minutes...but I'm not pissed off like I am with Leno. I'm more nostalgic for Gimme A Break and Clarissa Explains It All and, to a far lesser extent, Blossom and Sabrina The Teenage Witch.
15 Two And A Half Men - I was following the Charlie Sheen 2.5 Men fallout closely for a while, then I instantaneously got sick of it, started avoiding it and forgot whatever I learned. I assume it all boiled down to the anguish of working with John Cryer, right? Also, as much as I hate this show, I will illegally download the first episode of the next season and put my Samsung at risk for viruses, because I'm fascinated to see how they write derp Ashton Kutcher into it.
14 The Drew Carey Show - I think the only time I watched a full episode of this show in The States was in the Toyota Dealership waiting room when Lavar The Car was getting new tires, but I've probably watched all or part of 70 episodes or so here. It got pretty experimental towards the end of its run, but the fact that Drew continued to find decent looking 35-plus-year-old single women in Cleveland to date him was beyond suspension of disbelief.
13 Curb Your Enthusiasm - This is on a long list of pop culture items everyone loves but I dislike, along with Abbey Road, A History Of Violence and Lee Corso, to the point where it makes me sour which causes my buddy Schwartz to lash out at my contrarianism. If Larry David's character was staging a war with Ashton Kutcher's character from That 70s Show, I would side with the latter. Larry David is NO George Costanza, damnit.
12 Traffic Light - There are a few shows that we get here that are not fresh or particularly funny, but I watch for a while pondering their American origin. This is one of them. This show was canceled by the time it got to us (or I could be completely wrong), as I think some of the actors are now on current, more successful shows. Working in entertainment the last five years, I had a pretty good idea what was on the dial and where and when. So curious. Was it a short-lived show on Fox in 2007 that slipped out of my memory? Is possible were getting shows that were too generic/forgettable to ever get picked up? So curious.
11 The Simpsons - Of course it's all very late season Simpsons, and yes that ranking is valid...I would choo choo choose The Simpsons Season 20 over Traffic Light, but I regularly pick the next five shows all ahead of Season 20 Simpsons. Sigh.
10 The League - I still think this show sucks. I love toilet, sex and drug humor as much as the next guy, but The League's implementation of it hardly ever catches me off guard. Even worse, they have a fuggin 6-team fantasy football league. The Wire had like 50 characters in the first season and they grew the cast from there...these guys don't even have the confidence to write in at least 2 or 4 side characters and round out the league at 8 or 10 guys? Their portrayal of fantasy football is too far beneath the brand that I'm used to for this show to ever be relevant, satisfying.
9 How I Met Your Mother - I do laugh at this show, but the male characters are lamer than late-period Friends. I am dreaming of a How I Met Your Mother/Always Sunny crossover episode, the latter calling out the pervasive effeminacy of the former. Barney being held up as a man's man...get bent, Barney.
8 Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - I still think Jimmy Fallon is pretty hacky - not quite a Leno in training, but not that far removed, either. But whether it's him or creative talent behind the scenes, whoever keeps coming up with ideas like Jason Bateman re-enacting a scene from Teenwolf 2 is giving us comedy gold.
7 My Boys - Fine make fun of me, but the characters are drawn fairly atypically, fairly realistically. Not much happens in it and the show probably skews female, but when My Boys takes the screen in Abu Dhabi, I happily watch if Leslie doesn't make me change it to The Food Network. I promise you if I could figure out the league formats and the airing times for rugby, I'd choose that at 11 am on a Sunday over My Boys.
6 Community - I'm even fonder of this program now that each viewing spurs consideration of the strange genius of creator Dan Harmon, after reading this excellent AV Club series on the process for each episode of Season 2.
5 Seinfeld - A year ago, I could rarely stay tuned for a full 30 minutes of a Seinfeld rerun - I had finally reached my Seinfeld saturation point. Now when it comes on in Abu Dhabi, it satisfies again like a classic rock station playing "Naive Melody."
4 30 Rock - Okay, this is one of those pop cultures items I once pooh-poohed with my arms folded, only to do a 180 years later (like with the band Grizzly Bear). I can no longer manufacture excuses about how my initial negative impressions were reasonable. I now realize that 30 Rock was always quite clever. My bad. However, I still despise Jack McBrayer - I would like to see his character traded to 2.5 Men for the kid, who now is ripe for humor, demonstrating how comically strange puberty is.
3 It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia - He's a small man, but I think Charlie Day's cleverness, apparent in both his mental and physical comedy, is a reminiscent of John Candy.
2 The Daily Show - In the U.S. or in the U.A.E., watching the first 10 minutes of The Daily Show remains the closest feeling I'll ever get to the satisfaction of punching power brokers in the gut for their moronic, backwards or deceitful actions. We typically get the week's new Daily Shows late night Tuesday through late night Friday, and I'm excited about its return by the time we get to Tuesday.
1 Southpark - Southpark takes the most coveted spot on this list because I love the show AND I haven't over-watched the reruns, but don't discount the smokin-in-the-boys-room-like thrill of watching an unedited show that features the likes of Mr. Slave and the boy band Fingerbang, in your family room in a conservative religious state.
