One more very true article:
http://www.slate.com/id/2254129
An excerpt:
By Michael KinsleyPosted Monday, May 17, 2010, at 4:12 PM ET
"(Note: In the marital relations system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: the wives who watch
Law & Order obsessively, and the husbands who don't. This is their story. Ka-chunk.)
Recently I got married, fairly late in life for that sort of thing, and have made astonishing discoveries. Most of these revelations turn out to be common knowledge. But one, I believe, has not been widely aired.
People's Exhibit A (my wife), Your Honor, is a formidable, intelligent woman with an important and challenging job and a full private life. (Also undeniable loveliness and charm, which are not strictly relevant to the present case.) She doesn't squander her time. And yet she spends many hours a week watching reruns of
Law & Order—often back-to-back (the shows, that is).
It would be misleading to call her a fan.
Law & Order, the long-running crime drama, is not just one of her favorite TV shows, or even her very favorite. Other than reruns of
Law & Order, she has almost no interest in television at all. Specifically, she has no interest in any of the (to me) barely distinguishable
Law & Order spinoffs and rip-offs (such as
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,
Law & Order: Criminal Intent,
Law & Order: Double-Entry Bookkeeping,
CSI,
CSI: Miami,
Mayberry R.F.D. and so on.) She's not even interested in new episodes of
Law & Order itself. She couldn't tell you what night it's on and has no view about what this country is coming to when a man like Fred Thompson can be plucked from the obscurity of the United States Senate and entrusted with the responsibility of running the prosecutor's office on
Law & Order.
Nor does she care—or even, possibly, notice—whether it is Michael Moriarty or Sam Waterston who is being unvarnished in any episode she may be watching. Don't ask her whether the female assistant district attorney is the blonde or one of the brunettes. Don't attempt to amuse her by predicting what demographic category the judge will be from. ("They've had four black women in a row, so I'm thinking white man. No, I know, that's ridiculous, so I'll go with white woman—but in a wheelchair. Whaddya think, Honey? Honey?? Ouch, that hurt. OK, never mind.")
Exhibit A and I assumed that this was our little secret. Perhaps it had to do with our weather here in Seattle, which affects some people oddly. Or too much coffee. But then we had a visitor from the East Coast who announced that his wife was about to become the TV critic of a major newspaper. "And the amazing thing," he added, "is that she never watches TV except for reruns of
Law & Order.""