Wait a minute, wait a minute . . . what day is today?
I’m asking my wife, even though I already know what day it is.
But I want her to tell me.
We’re having dinner. PBS NewsHour is on in the background.
Come on, I say. What day is it?
She knows exactly what I’m doing. And she’s not amused.
“Are you really going to make me say it?” she asks.
Come onnnnn, I say. Tell me. What day is it?
Finally, she relents.
“It’s Monday,” she says, flatly.
Monday! I say. Do you know what that means?
Again, I know exactly what it means. But I want her to tell me.
And, again, she relents, knowing I’ll continue to nag her until she says it.
“Antiques Roadshow,” she says.
Yes! That’s right, I say.
Monday means Antiques Roadshow.
“Are we finished now?” she asks.
Yes, I tell her. Until next Monday.
See, my wife hates Antiques Roadshow. Absolutely loathes it.
She considers it Old Man TV.
I, on the other hand, think it’s one of the finest shows on television.
Have you seen it?
These appraisers travel around to different cities, and people bring them their old junk, hoping to learn it’s worth something.
And the appraisers specialize in everything from art to sports memorabilia to Sampuru.
That’s the Japanese Art of Fake Food. It’s the lifelike pieces of plastic sushi you see displayed in the window of every restaurant from Sapporo to Fukuoka.
I’m not kidding—about the appraisers’ varied specialties or the ubiquitous plastic sushi.
The typical Roadshow episode is comprised of scenes that go something like this:
A frumpy, sixty-ish woman in Des Moines stands next to a table with a flowered porcelain vase at its center.
“I remember that it sat on my grandma’s mantle forever. She kept pennies and clothespins in it. When she passed away, it went to my mother, and then my mother gave it to me. I don’t know where it came from or how old it is. My husband thinks it’s ugly and wants me to get rid of it.”
The appraiser, having flown in from New York, looks dapper, yet awkwardly out of place in his peak-lapel suit as he stands on the opposite side of the table.
“Perhaps your husband would be interested to learn that it’s a thousand-year-old Plum vase that dates to the Song Dynasty. At auction, I would expect it to go for between forty and fifty thousand dollars.”
The lady, stunned, stammers . . .
“Well . . . I guess Earl’s just gonna have to live with it then.”
That’s classic Roadshow.
But such scenes are not why I most enjoy it.
I tune in for the Rolexes.
I’m a watch guy. Always have been.
Nearly every episode features at least one watch appraisal.
Rolexes are my favorite.
Perhaps the most well-known piece came from a Vietnam vet who’d bought a Rolex Daytona in Thailand in 1974 for, like, three hundred dollars.
Upon returning from Southeast Asia, he’d put the watch in a safe deposit box and forgotten about it.
It was pristine.
And he had all the original packaging and paperwork—the receipt from the base exchange, the warranty, the instruction manual . . . everything.
The guy tells the appraiser his story.
And then the appraiser explains to the guy how rare and desirable such a watch is.
“This is the finest version of such a piece I’ve ever seen,” he says.
Of course, the kicker comes at the end when he reveals the auction estimate.
Five Hundred to Seven Hundred Thousand Dollars.
The owner literally falls over upon hearing the news.
That’s why I love Antiques Roadshow.
The big reveal! You always learn something.
And you get to see people in some of happiest, most nostalgic moments of their lives.
Then, you go walking through your house, thinking, hmmm . . . I wonder what Grandpa’s old pipe collection might be worth.
Different people want different things from their TV shows.
For me, it’s pretty simple.
I want balance in my viewing diet.
At one end of the spectrum, I want my news as dull, dry, and factual as possible.
I want meat-and-potatoes brain food.
That means BBC World News and PBS NewsHour.
This likely stems from the summers I spent in Washington, DC, as a Naval Academy midshipman.
I stayed with a retired Navy captain while interning on Capitol Hill.
Every night, he’d make me sit and watch the MacNeil-Lehrer Report, the precursor to PBS NewsHour.
And he’d make me drink dry gin martinis and smoke cigars while doing so.
My palate then was more calibrated to USA Today-type news and Bud Lite, making the whole exercise rather excruciating.
And, he would repeatedly ask me what I thought about a particular news story and then make me defend my views, all while choking down pine needle-tasting booze and a Dutch Masters.
I mean, who wants to actually think about anything?
Suffice it to say I didn’t enjoy it then.
But I’ll be damned if I didn’t subsequently develop a taste, bordering on obsession, for dry martinis, dry news, and working-man cigars.
The news, then, forms the base of my TV food pyramid.
In the center, one finds shows that feed my sense of nostalgia.
I’d put Antiques Roadshow there. And the original Magnum P.I., of which I will never tire.
It’s like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or any Seinfeld episode.
I don’t care how many times I’ve seen it. I’ll never get sick of it.
At the tip of the pyramid, opposite PBS NewsHour on the TV viewing spectrum, resides my brain’s candy aisle.
Mindlessly stupid. High-fructose corn syrup.
Juvenile? Good.
Fart humor? Even better.
Gimme some Beavis and Butthead, baby!
Have you seen it lately?
Whereas in the Nineties the boys had only music videos to ridicule, now they have the entire internet.
It’s given them an entirely new medium with which to work.
And the results are genius.
Do you know how much stupid shit is on the internet?
Of course you do.
I discovered some new episodes recently while on a plane.
I was flipping through the television selections on the screen in front of me, thinking I’d find something useful, like a TED talk.
I often feel the need to be productive on planes.
Then I saw it: four episodes of Beavis and Butthead.
So much for being productive.
I assumed they were originals, which would have been a terrific find.
But imagine my delight to learn they were entirely new.
I dove right in. And laughed my ass off for two straight hours.
What a pleasure.
And kudos to Mike Judge for preserving everything that was great about the original Nineties version.
Of course, it’s best to consume Beavis and Butthead only after you’ve eaten your vegetables.
Read The Economist. Check out some BBC. See where the markets closed on your Wall Street Journal app.
Then watch the boys eviscerate some TikTok idiot.
You’ll feel far more satisfied.
So, there you have it, folks.
The balanced TV diet.
NewsHour at the base.
Roadshow and Magnum in the center.
And Beavis and Butthead—to be enjoyed infrequently and only in small servings—at the top.
Bon Appetit!