ShareThisBy SAM MCMANIS
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
If you watch a lot of TV _ oh, stop that intellectual posturing, you know you do _ you probably experience certain moments of discovery. They are not so much revelatory or epiphanic _ nothing so highfalutin _ but important insights nonetheless.
Say you're watching Jim Belushi, that quintessential thespian, on "According to Jim," and the thought suddenly hits: "Hey, why is it that hot sitcom wives pick such fat, dumpy husbands?"
Or you'll be engrossed in "7th Heaven" when you notice that no one in the Camden family says "goodbye" on the phone. They just hang up. And you get to thinking: "How come all TV characters have such bad phone manners?"
Or you're catching a "Seinfeld" rerun and, out of nowhere, you make this connection: "What's the deal with the '90s trend of men wearing a tucked-in shirt without a belt? There's Jerry, Ian Ziering's character on 'Beverly Hills 90210,' and Peter DeLuise on '21 Jump Street.' "
Or ...
You get the picture. You have way too much TV trivia rattling around in your cranium.
So, what to do?
Start a Web site and write a book, naturally.
At least, that's what Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting did.
Their Web site, called televisionwithoutpity.com, has been up and blogging for eight years now and averages 60 million page views a month. And, at last, they have peeled their eyes away from the tube long enough to write a book, "Television Without Pity: 752 Things We Love To Hate (and Hate To Love) About TV" (Quirk Books, $15.99, 320 pages).
It is, as they say on TV, chock-full o' nuggets of pop culture wisdom. Though the subtitle _ and the book's format _ suggests an encyclopedic compendium of all things television, it actually is a vast collection of rants from two women who really, really watch a lot of TV.
Open the book to any page _ 164, for example _ and you'll stumble upon categories such as "Money, Infrequent Handling of by TV Characters."
From what deep recesses in their knotted psyches do their skewed points of view come?
"Oh, it's just from years and years of watching this stuff," Ariano says. "We love TV, and that's why we watch it so critically and with so much attitude. And we notice dumb little conventions."
So much so that, for years now, people have told the two to "get a life," Bunting says, and to "just shut up and enjoy the shows."
But they just can't help themselves. They were born to critique.
"Picking out the little specifics that make TV relatable to people and pointing out continuity errors is our way of building community. What we've learned lo these many years on the site is that TV, especially bad TV, creates a sense of unity among its watchers," Bunting says.
Powerful stuff, especially for two 30-something women who met via the Internet _ Bunting lives in Brooklyn and Ariano in Toronto _ while blogging about "Beverly Hills 90210."
Still, while Bunting and Ariano make a living with their punditry (the site teems with advertising), they seem almost embarrassed by attention. And they don't really believe the claim that they are making TV producers more accountable for the plots they air.
"It's just what we do," Bunting says. "We'll be watching Dr. Phil in separate cities and IMing about how his makeup looks a little orange that day. That'll wind up (in the book and on the site)."
The women don't always agree on their peeves, however.
For example, it really bugs Ariano when gifts on TV invariably have both the box and the lid wrapped individually. Bunting doesn't give it a second thought. Likewise, Bunting obsesses about men (Exhibit A: Jerry Seinfeld) tucking in their shirts and not wearing belts. Ariano just shrugs at the practice.
"They are such stupid things to be irritated about," Ariano says. "Not everyone cares as much about TV as we do. I'm sympathetic to that. But this is what we do."
It's not all they do, though.
"I read books," Ariano offers.
Books? As for Bunting, she says she is vaguely familiar with them. She jokingly blames her TV addiction _ and her chosen occupation _ on her parents.
"They were extremely strict about TV viewing when I was growing up," she says.
"If I were permitted to watch 'The Dukes of Hazzard' as a kid, I'd probably be a doctor today."
(Sam McManis can be reached at smcmanis(at)sacbee.com)
