With the writer’s strike looking to not be resolved any time soon, it looks like my Netflix queue will have a larger-than-normal chunk bitten out of it in the near future.  In a way this is a good thing since, as anyone with kids can attest to, your TV watching time is severely curtailed (not necessarily a bad thing).  We can barely keep up with the shows we watch normally so adding a movie or two to the mix is a luxury sometimes.  Megan and I love movies so the cutback in our normal volume of ones we’d like to see makes our Netflix queue keep on rising like a lump of dough with some out-of-control yeast (Good God, that analogy sucked – see why we need professional writers?).

I support the writers in their quest to receive the proper proportion of royalties for DVDs and online content; something they’re currently getting shafted on (for reasons too lengthy to go into here).  What I do on this stupid little blog is nothing compared to the volume and creativity that professional writers churn out on a daily basis.  Writers are the ones who make shows like the Daily Show great.  Gripping drama?  Hilarious comedy?  Thank a writer.  I hate to paraphrase an old cliché, but writers really are like air.  You don’t realize how vital it is until you don’t have it.  With the exception of a few Luddites and Unabombers out there, we all like TV shows and movies and it’s up to the writers to put lucid words in the mouths of the pretty actors with plastic body parts.  Leave the improvising Second City and Groundlings alums.

Now that most shows have run out of their “buffer zone” of episodes in the can, we’re now entering Planet Rerun for the very foreseeable future.  A perfect example was the last episode of Chuck.  In place of “Scenes from next week”, the narrator’s voice said “Chuck Bartowski will be back in January. At least we hope so.” And then it faded to black.

Since we don’t have justice in this world sometimes, the juggernaut that is American Idol will plow along and have even larger ratings over the second-rate reality shows that will be coming out in lieu of original programming.  It’s only a matter of time, if this strike isn’t resolved, that Fox will resort to airing “So I Boffed your Grandmother” and “Man vs. Antelope: The Sequel”.  Let’s all hope it doesn’t come to that.