We don't. We sit on the couch each night, while we eat, and we watch television.
Before you scold us, let me add that we have our family mealtime conversations during breakfast and/or lunch. It's the beauty of homeschooling.
Anyway, each night we usually watch the same show, and we tend to get very emotionally attached to our shows.
We had The Big Bang Theory. We watched that almost every night, but did take breaks for other stuff. I think we watched The Voice on some nights. I can't quite remember. Oh, and we watched Modern Family.
Eventually, we caught up to the broadcast of the The Big Bang Theory. Now instead of being able to watch it almost every night, we could only watch it weekly. If that even, because TV shows seem to often take breaks.
We went to How I Met Your Mother next. Tim and I had watched the first season or two when Jack was a preschooler. We liked it, but didn't find the time to watch further seasons. Now it seemed a good time to catch up.
Soon all three of us were very attached to that show. Once a week we'd take a break to watch new broadcasts of Sheldon, Leonard, Raj, etc, and we watched Modern Family, and sometimes Happy Endings. (And around this time too, we also maybe watched The Voice). But for the most part, our hearts were now with Lily, Marshall, Barney, Ted, and Robin
Then the same thing happened as before. We caught up with the broadcast. Now we couldn't see our friends nightly. We had to find new ones.
For a short time we dedicated our time to Happy Endings. We liked that, but our emotional attachment to the show was less than it was with The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother.
Soon we were done with the show, because there were only three seasons.
For our next show.....
We got the idea that we should audition shows and vote. Our plan was to pick two shows. We'd watch each one on alternating nights.
We tried Scrubs. It's another show that Tim and I started and never finished. Jack didn't like it much. He also wasn't in love with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Nor did he get on board with Community.
The two shows we all three agreed on were Charmed and Desperate Housewives. Those won with our preferential voting system. Desperate Housewives is what came out on top. We were in love with that show after the first episode, which is rare for us. We usually need a warming up period. But no, Bree Van De Kamp grabbed onto our hearts immediately.
I was fine with Charmed. At one point it was my favorite show, and I was excited to share it with Jack. Plus, I guess I had started it in the second season, because I found most of the early episodes were new to me.
The thing is though, we were so in love with Desperate Housewives. There was this kind of disappointment on the nights that were Charmed nights. We liked the three witchy sisters, but we liked the women on Wisteria Lane more.
At some point, we came up with the mutual decision to give up on Charmed. We watched Desperate Housewives every night. Then it got to the point that we were so addicted, we started watching two episodes a night.
I think our relationship with this show was even more intense than our past ones. It might have been because we watched most of it during the summer and there was no need (or desire) to take breaks for once a week visits with our old friends. Sheldon, Penny, Lily, Marshall....all those people. They were on summer hiatus.
For us, it was Desperate Housewives every night. We were obsessed...maybe more so Jack and I, than Tim. (Tim sometimes fell asleep during the second episode...especially during the later seasons).
Then we got to the last season. We knew this good-bye would be different. We wouldn't be going from binge-watching to weekly watching. Desperate Housewives was over...off the air. Good-bye would be good-bye.
For the last show, we decided to have a finale meal. Jack came up with the idea to eat the food that was featured on the very first episode....what the four women brought to Mary Alice's funeral: fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, paella, and muffins.
We ate and said good-bye to the families we grew to love.
Then it was time to move onto the next show. We all decided on Ugly Betty. My mom suggested it, and I also think Netflix and IMDb suggested it as well....for fans of Desperate Housewives.
Choosing the show was also a way for us to stay somewhat connected to Desperate Housewives. Two of the cast members from Desperate Housewives were also on Ugly Betty.
Vanessa Williams played Renee on Desperate Housewives. We didn't like her character at first, and we were total snobs, unwilling to welcome the new girl to the neighborhood. But then eventually she grew on us. We liked her, and we were very happy to see her once again in Ugly Betty Land.
Tony Plana played an evil child molester on Desperate Housewives. On Ugly Betty, he plays a warm-hearted GOOD father. It was fun for us to see the change.
(Note: One day, Jack and I went back to watch Tony Plana being evil on Desperate Housewives. We assumed now that we knew him as the wonderful sweet Ignacio, he'd look far less menacing. It would be funny seeing him TRYING to look mean. We were wrong. He was still creepy and frightening, which to me is a testament to Tony Plana's acting skills.)
We liked Ugly Betty from the beginning, but we didn't love it as quickly as we loved Desperate Housewives. We still called characters by the names the actors had in the past. Wilhelmina was still Renee. Ignacio was Alejandro. We called Amanda Quinn, because that's how we knew her from How I Met Your Mother. Betty's boyfriend Walter was Stuart the comic book book from The Big Bang Theory.
Then there came a day that I called a character by their actual Ugly Betty name, and at this point I knew Ugly Betty was my new love.
Jack and I loved Desperate Housewives so much, it seemed doubtful we could ever love anything more. Though we should have had faith since we felt the same way about The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother.
It happened though. One day we both admitted that we both might love Ugly Betty even more than we loved Desperate Housewives.
As hard as it was for me to say good-bye to Wisteria Lane, saying good-bye to Betty was even harder. I think I was mildly depressed when we came to the end.
What made things worse is we've been struggling to find a new show.
First we tried Once Upon a Time. Tim and I liked the first episode and were disappointed that Jack didn't like it. We pleaded with him to give it more of a chance. We reminded him how it sometimes took us awhile to love our other shows. He reluctantly agreed. After the second episode, he said it might be growing on him. I'm not sure if he meant it, or was just trying to be nice.
Then we got to the third episode and the opposite of what usually happens to us happened. Our like didn't grow to love, it grew to dislike.
We didn't want to continue.
Next on the list: Drop Dead Diva.
I had watched some of this a few years ago and liked it. Jack was eager to try it.
We all liked the first episode, or at least Jack and I did.
Soon Tim was bitching about it though. He complained about the law stuff being unrealistic. I'm not sure how he knows about all that, since he's not a lawyer. But I'm taking his word for it anyway.
Tim's dislike of the show became contagious. I started seeing annoying patterns and I pointed them out. For example, in almost every episode someone tells Jane she wouldn't understand what they're going through. She gets this certain dreamy look and tells them oh, yes she can. Then how many times would Parker threaten to fire one of the lawyers for taking a case, then they win the case, and he's proud of them?
We watched the first two seasons of Drop Dead Diva as a show we didn't respect, but kind of enjoyed anyway. But by the third season, we decided enough was enough. I think also I realized we weren't watching because we cared about the characters, but only because we were curious about what would happen. Would Grayson ever find out that Jane was Deb? I wanted to know. So I decided...screw this. We'll just look up spoilers online.
After saying adios to Jane and her law firm, we caught up on Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother. Then for fun we watched the first episode of Saved by the Bell. It wasn't that much fun.
Next, we decided to try The New Girl. We've watched two episodes of that, and plan to continue. It keeps my attention. I'm not bored. But I don't love it yet.
We'll see what happens next. Maybe the love will grow, and I'll end up saying as much as I loved Betty Suarez, I love Jess even more. Or maybe the show will go downhill and we'll need to find something new.
We'll see what happens.
Edited to add (3/25/14)- Jack just told me that he's decided he liked Desperate Housewives better than Ugly Betty. That being said...it was close. He ranks Ugly Betty 10/10 and Desperate Housewives 10.000001 out of 10.
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