Thursday , March 28 2024
It happened for the first time last week and it's more than a little scary.

The Alphabet Net Rules My Wednesdays?

Looking at my viewing schedule for this evening I realized something terribly interesting – I'm going to be watching three hours of ABC.  This occurred last week as well (the lineup was the same), but outside of sports and awards shows I'm not sure that it's ever occurred before that.

Oh sure, I used to watch the entirety of TGIF back in the day (pre-Family Matters), but that was only ever two hours of shows, not three.  I have no idea what ABC aired in the 10pm slot, but I know that I didn't watch.

I know what you're thinking at this point (I say that a lot, but this time I really do) – "what does ABC even have on tonight… hmmmm… Wednesday… that means Lost is on, but what else?"  See, that's exactly what makes my watching all of ABC's primetime tonight so weird – most people probably couldn't even tell me their lineup, and even I didn't realize that it was all ABC tonight until I really thought about it.

For the record, they're airing Scrubs, Better off Ted, Lost, and The Irregulars.  And that's just another reason my doing this is weird – I'm actually watching Better off Ted.  It has to be a weak night of television, otherwise neither Ted nor The Irregulars would be on the viewing schedule (NBC is airing a Law & Order repeat).

Now, if you're really up on ABC's lineup, you'll note in the above paragraph another issue, but you have to really know their lineup – there is no show called The Irregulars, it's not like there's a Sherlock Holmes-spinoff, although that would be pretty cool.  No, the show is actually called The Unusuals, but The Irregulars, or The Oddities, or Those Weird Cops That We've All Seen on Other Shows Before would work just fine as a title, too.  That last one can even be shortened to the too-cool moniker of TWCTWASOOSB.

I don't mean to denigrate The Irregulars – I actually do like the actors and didn't think the first episode was half-bad, and the show really has an ABC feel to it (as discussed on this past week's Screen Time), but…I don't know.  It seems like a poor way to be spending my Wednesday 10pm hour. 

It's actually a very blah night of television in general, even on ABC.  I have no idea what's going on with Scrubs this season, main characters regularly fail to appear in episodes – there's even been more than one without J.D.  Has the budget been slashed to such a huge degree that they can't even have all the actors appear in every episode anymore.  I understand people missing episodes due to illness or pregnancy or goodness knows what else, but unless half the cast of Scrubs has had the flu all season and they're just passing it back and forth, there's something else going on there.

But, good, bad, or ugly, I'll be watching it and the rest of the ABC lineup tonight, even if the only show I'm really looking forward to seeing is Lost

Wednesday – clearly it's hump day.

About Josh Lasser

Josh has deftly segued from a life of being pre-med to film school to television production to writing about the media in general. And by 'deftly' he means with agonizing second thoughts and the formation of an ulcer.

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