#28 - A Short List Of Shows I Would Appreciate Being Able To Stream

I watched a lot of TV growing up, in what I would not hesitate to say the golden age of television. We were still figuring out the whole reality tv thing (many thanks & apologies to the 2008 writers strike), MTV was sponsored by Mountain Dew, and if you watched Comedy Central after 9pm you were bound to see a minimum of three commercials for Girls Gone Wild every half an hour.

But for whatever reason, there are entire series from My Youth™ that will apparently never be put on streaming services. (In MTV’s case, I get that it’s mostly because the expense to license the music would be too costly, but may I suggest they just do what they do on Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making The Team and play the same generic pop song to replace any other music being played in order to further allow my brain to fully blank out as I watch?) And uh, here’s the list of ones I wish they would!

Inside The Actors Studio

This show was made for nerds like me. I want to know all about actors processes! Oh my god yes please take the craft of acting far too seriously in front of other people who are also deeply committed to specific aspects of it.

Did I think it was very important to have answers to Bernard Pivot’s 10 questions? Absolutely. Of course. I honestly will consider it a sign of growth that I have not obsessed over what my favorite word is in a long time.

Actors used to lose their fucking minds during those interviews. The two-hour Robin Williams episode is some of the greatest art ever produced, but also Kate Hudson being extremely serious about the absolute flop that was the musical Nine, while she proudly boasts about being a guys girl because it’s 2009 and that was the coolest thing a woman could be? The same show gave us both of those time capsules! The show became a parody of itself and started giving platforms to increasingly odd choices (did the cast of Family Guy really uh, need to be lauded in the way they were? James Lipton asked to “speak to Cleveland” which like…yikes) (also, on a similar but separate note, during The Simpson’s interview, the editors chose to edit still shots of the characters over the actors doing their voices, which is such a bizarre choice. Like I can see them doing the voice while looking at the moving drawings aka animation on the show…on this show, I would like to see the person do the voice because that’s…the…fun…part) and was eventually sponsored by Nissan, so, idk, feels like we could get it up on like Peacock at least, right?

I Love The 70’s

Oh, VH1 of my youth. Honestly one of the ultimate channels. (That 4-hour movie about The Jackson family that I watched like nine times?? Traumatizing! Never tried to throw a can into the recycling from far away to this day!) They had Best Week Ever, a show that was deeply important to my comedy taste development, regularly marathoned entire seasons of America’s Next Top Model, and, most importantly produced a shitton of shows where comedians were asked to reminisce about different subjects which is my ultimate form of media.

The I Love The 70s/80s/90s series are obvious classics, and they also had these countdowns of classic reality show moments, and at one point I definitely watched a countdown of the Maxim Hot 100??

Incredible television, please let me rewatch it. (VH1 also tended to ruin their own shows by overdoing things, which I would love to witness again as an adult and not a vaguely confused teenager who couldn’t figure out why concepts only seemed to be good for a season or two before they fixated on the most annoying aspects of whatever it was they were doing. I’m begging all showrunners to stop thinking skits are funny. They so rarely are!!)

Heavy: The Story Of Metal

Okay, we’re almost done with my VH1 praise, but this was truly one of my favorite documentaries of all time and I have never been able to re-watch it and this thing lived on my TiVo for YEARS before that tech became defunct and then when we got a DVR player I taped that rerun the second I fucking could.

Everything I know about Metal I learned from watching this documentary series. Most of it was an oral history narrated by a bunch of the members of the bands it was about. The episodes were really clearly laid out and followed a timeline from the early bands, how England wrought the music it did, the entire history and timeline of the Glam era, the Tipper Gore hearings, and then ends with modern bands and like discussing Metallica. (And apparently, at one point in response to someone saying that Metallica sold out, James Hetfield said “Yeah, we sell out every night.” which is both very cheesy and very metal.)

Anyway, 10/10 documentary series and, tragically, the only stream I’ve ever found only had was in German and none of the interviews were subtitled.

Early Seasons of Project Runway

I have season 3 on DVD, so I’m not fully desperate, but maaaan season 1 & 2 of that show? Perfection.

Santino Rice calling Chloe a pattern maker? Nick making a fishtail skirt and talking about Paris Hilton’s Greek shipping heir boyfriend who was also named Paris? What happened to Andrè!! Jay looking up and seeing a picture of the Chrysler Building and gasping “art deco” only to go on and win the Banana Republic challenge!

(Also, sidenote, so weird and wild that we still allow a clothing store to be named Banana Republic!)

Bravo had some real bangers back in the day. Hey Paula capturing the very moment that Paula Abdul found out via email on her Blackberry that she has been completely fired from The Bratz live-action movie is culture, actually. Bravo used to just go all out with their programming, and it was so watchable. Kathy Griffin used to be all over that network and it was better for it! But then celebrities got more guarded, and Being Bobby Brown ended, and Tabitha stopped taking over salons, and Bravo moved into the Housewives era they remain in to this day.

The Paper

MTV really understood that high schoolers just want to watch other, cooler high schoolers do things. It’s why Laguna Beach worked, and it’s why I would really really like them to release The Paper.

We have every episode of Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search For Elle Woods on YouTube, why can’t I have this??

The episode where the date takes place at a Dave Matthews Band concert? If that doesn’t tell you it was 2008 I don’t know what will!

Over-competitive, driven, journalism nerds who took their high school paper way too seriously? Perfect television. How did this only have one season that has never seen the light of day again??

(The other MTV show that I would love to rewatch from this era was Dance Life which was produced by JLo and introduced everyone to the iconic LA Millenium Dance Complex and showed that being a backup dancer mostly just means asking your boss at the jeans store you work at for time off to audition. They do get bonus points for featuring every dancer having an emotional breakdown that they danced their way through to a pop song, incredible work all around.)

So Graham Norton

Look, the current Graham Norton show is wonderful, sure, but I would love love love if they would put up the old show that he did. I was a kid who definitely wasn’t supposed to be watching it, and I didn’t get half the jokes, but I just remember laughing the entire way through and would love to watch it now when I could actually understand what was so funny about the audience’s sex stories.

The phones! That transparent late 90s blue iMac! Celebrities taking the piss! I love it.

One of my favorite Carrie Fisher interviews of all time is available, so I do recommend!

And until I can get any and all of these, I guess I’ll continue my annual marathon on NYC Prep because I gave in and bought it (pure entertainment, never regretted it for a second) and realize that it’s probably not the shows or the quality of the programming, it was the joy of watching cable and discovering what television could even be!

There’s nothing like consuming an entire season of a show that you become so dedicated to you’re willing to watch whatever fucking commercials air on loop on CMT because a reality show about Coyote Ugly bartenders was weirdly compelling!

Anyway, I miss stumbling on shows on cable, I feel like it’s too conscious of a choice to watch things and has made mindless-TV kind of impossible, since I have to make an active choice, and the whole point of watching something is to not have to make any more decisions. It is a numbing medium, and sometimes we need a break. I think what’s missing from a lot of discussions around burnout is the exhaustion of making decisions, and how so many of our avenues to avoid those were heavily demonized, so people feel guilty for taking breaks, so they never take a fully relaxing one.

It’s okay that sometimes tv shows are stupid and silly and aren’t trying to make grand statements about the human condition. Sometimes that’s what art and theatre does, it allows us to take a break and have a bit of fun!

We contain multitudes, entire universes of thought. I shouldn’t feel compelled to defend everything I watch with an ~analysis. Will I absolutely go to bat for why the Real Housewives franchises contain some of the most authentic depictions of women over the age of 40? Any day! But I can also just want to watch the Scary Island episodes because they’re bonkers. Sometimes it’s simple.

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures! TV is fun and I love it! It doesn’t have to be that deep!