By: Michael Jewell
I don’t watch much TV. Wait, that’s a lie. I watch just a little less TV than the average person — which is several hours a day, on and off, usually over my shoulder while at my drawing table. What I don’t do is invest myself. There aren’t any programs that I follow from week-to-week; in fact, as a whole, television is a medium that holds very little appeal to me. Instead, my viewing habits are jack rabbit-speed channel-surfing and rerun stalking. I’ll watch the same episode of a rare watchable show eight or nine times just for the sheer, thoughtless pleasure of zoning out to a familiar pattern. Having considered this, there is no network more geared to my tastes of spookily-choreographed perfection than Spike TV: Television for Men on Comcast channel 64 here in Savannah.
Now, I am a self-described sissy. I can’t swap out my own bike chain, let alone a transmission. Spike’s tagline, “Television for Men,” though technically inclusive of even my own Y chromosome, is an unsubtle message that their programming should not appeal to me. At the network’s launch, I expected them to offer overblown, machismo-oriented junk like “The Man Show,” the boisterous, brew-soaked misogyny celebration I hailed as the end of Western civilization upon its airing on Comedy Central in my teen years. To my surprise, the men that Spike execs are targeting include science-enamored nerds like me.
The rerun block on Spike TV consists of a handful of cheaply-licensed franchises from four in the afternoon until one o’clock the next morning. I’m not certain what motivation prompted Spike to air “Star Trek: the Next Generation,” but I am thankful all the same. Gene Roddenberry’s secular-humanist utopia, a vision of the future devoid of war, money and sickness is balm to my grim worldview, and is a science fiction classic. It’s also a show with a notoriously devoted following of geeks. Who knew that Spike would be making tours of the convention circuit in hopes of attracting viewers to their afternoon lineup?
After a block of several “Trek” incarnations — including the underrated “Voyager” — Spike throws in the towel for the rest of the night with hour after hour of the original “CSI: Crime Scene Investigators.” I avoided this show for much of its ongoing eight-season run because of its traditional cop-show formula with gimmicky augmentations. Little did I know how awesome gimmicky shows can be. Anywhere between six and midnight, I can watch William Peterson as ass-kicking uber-nerd Gil Grissom, and his multi-facetted team of crack CSIs solve puzzling crimes with the magic of science. Each show follows a bizarre conceit, from plastic surgery to teenage vampirism and full-body animal costumes, that is window dressing for the developing compelling character drama that is the show’s real core.
Why Spike would devote such a significant block of time in between police chases and Japanese slapstick comedy to nerd-friendly shows is a mystery, but I have a feeling someone on their board of directors is looking out for me. Evidently the introverted cartoonists of America are just the men that Spike is looking for.
