You know when we get the happiest in dispatch? Besides when we give successful CPR instructions, or we hear the first cry of the new baby, I mean?
When America’s Funniest Home Videos is on. That and Cops.
I know, who am I? Normally I have a reasonable intellect. I am not a moron. These shows don’t normally suit me. Let me explain: At my last job we weren’t allowed to watch TV, but here it’s always on — news in the daytime, and whatever at night. When it’s busy we don’t hear it or notice it, but it sure is nice when it’s quiet. Every show is interrupted, of course, by routine business, as is well and good, so DVDs are good, because you can pause when the phone rings.
But I have a new theory — there should be a 24-hour channel for emergency workers: showing Funniest Videos and Cops. They’re segmented, so you never care if you watch all or part of the show, and they cheer you up. People behaving badly and animals being extremely cute. In this kind of environment, it would be perfect. We’d watch.
Well, Court TV DOES show Cops a heck of a lot, it wouldn’t surprise me if they went to the Cops-only format one of these days (which would delight my ex, who loves that show).
There’s a funny pet video show on Animal Planet I sometimes end up watching. Y’know, due to THE CUTENESS. 🙂
AFHV is a crowd favorite around here — my husband and kids just go hysterical. There was one episode in which a birthday girl starting hitting everthing in site while attempting to break the pinata — dangerous, and yet so funny at the same time.
We used to watch Cops when we lived in Santa Ana. We worked really odd hours, and only saw each other after midnight most nights, so we would sit on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and watch some TV. There’s nothing like watching Cops and realizing, “Hey, that’s like two blocks away from here – I remember that night!”
The new version of AFHV IS good–I HATED the BobSaget,DaisyFuentes version that was all cheezy host skits and crotch hits. But I like the new one with Tom Bergeron (that can’t be his real name, [is it?] so I think that’s a major reason I love the show, that self-conscious intertextual jab [at whom? the public so desensitised by television? at themselves for presuming the videos they show wake people up from their system-induced stupor long enough to feel something for another human being, some raw unfiltered emotion? or is it sarcastic, because they know that a montage entitled, “27 groin hits in 20 seconds” will not change the world for the force of good, but they do it anyway because the public apparently has an insatiable need to consume [and provide] the content? I don’t know, and I don’t really care–I like the cute animal clips) because they compress the clips they have a lot of (piñata attacks, groin hits, wheeled stunts gone awry) and mix it up a fair amount. The old show had too much of people getting hurt–I can’t handle that, I just twist up inside. I do wish they’d do away entirely with old people falling. Absolutely not funny to me, but maybe it’s just because the women in my family have glass hips.
I haven’t watched COPS since it started, so I guess my rambling post ends here.
If you need a laugh AFHV is the ticket. I call it the Dumb Shit Man SHow.
Cops is perfect for the fire house mentality. There is another one that is called (I think) “America’s Dumbest” or something along those lines. I just know that the guys at the fire hall like to watch it. Okay, the younger guys. And the factg that is segmented is why fire fighters like it. It holds their attention for about as long as their attention span allows. And no, you are not lowering yourself intellectually by watching this stuff, it just reflects what you hear and what we see on the job. Besides these types of shows don’t require thinking. They are just plain entertainment.
we watch AFV too – even if I have seen it 14 times before I still giggle.
I remember watching AFV after having my second c-section, and laughing so hard I almost popped my stitches. The morphine drip might have helped…
My husband love AFHV but I can’t watch it. I have this wacked-out sense of embarrassment that makes watching shows like that uncomfortable for me. When I was a kid, I would feel so embarrassed for Lucy and Ethel or Laverne and Shirley that I would have to walk out of the room, even though I knew the shows were fictional. Currently, “Monk” will send me fleeing the room.