Roush on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, West Wing and Law & Order
Question: Since about 2000, I've tried to find one place on the TV lineup where there are three continuous hours of television that I want to watch. I think it began with
Millionaire,
The West Wing and
Law & Order, and then there was
Gilmore Girls,
Veronica Mars and
Judging Amy. My favorite trifecta was last season's
Ugly Betty,
Grey's Anatomy and
Men in Trees, which was fun while it lasted. Now, to my surprise, this year I have an all-freshman guilty-pleasure trifecta on Wednesdays:
Pushing Daisies, Gossip Girl and
Dirty Sexy Money, although that will soon be complicated by another guilty pleasure,
Project Runway. I know that since you get screeners you don't necessarily watch TV live or in order, but do you have a trifecta?
— Erin
Matt Roush: It's not so much that I get screeners (fewer than you'd imagine this time of year) but that, like others who watch TV in high volume with an eye for time management in a DVR age, I tend not to watch TV in real time. That often means that I start the evening by playing back something from a previous night and then catching up with the current night while it's in progress. There are also many nights when all of the offerings at 10 pm/ET leave me cold, so I play back shows from the 8 pm and 9 pm hours to finish up the night. And so on. I will say that your choice of front-running shows in those Wednesday-night time slots mirrors mine. All three are great fun. And since Bravo tends to repeat
Project Runway immediately after the first showing, I'd just stay up to watch the replay (or play it back if you have the equipment). Another example of my form of DVR trifecta is on Thursday, which usually consists of watching
Ugly Betty and
Grey's Anatomy, followed by playing back
CSI,
Survivor and then whatever NBC comedies I still have energy for. The night I'm most likely to watch shows in consecutive order in an approximation of real time is on Sunday, and that trifecta now consists of
The Amazing Race, the much-improved
Desperate Housewives and
Brothers & Sisters (playing back
Curb Your Enthusiasm as a tart nightcap). This may all be too much information, but isn't it fun to actually talk TV instead of addressing this blasted strike?
