Quantum Leap was a really really good show. Most folks don't remember a whole lot about it because it's been almost ten years since it went off the air, but it was really great. It was about a guy who was leaping around in time, and would take on the identities of the people he leaped into, and they would leap into him in the future. He also had a friend named Al that only he could see or hear so a lot of times he would be talking to Al and to everyone around him it would look like he was talking to thin air. That's why I'm always careful when I see a homeless person talking to himself, because I always wonder if it might not be Sam, talking to Al. Plus, everything I know about Quantum Physics I learned from watching this show.

 

It's one of those shows that got taken off the air way too early. There were still a hundred million stories they could have done.

 

I hate when they do that. Especially when really really stupid shows stay on the air forever and ever, like Murder, She Wrote and Matlock and Touched By An Angel and Diagnosis Murder and Walker, Texas Ranger. It's not that I hate any of those shows, it's just that I think they're really really terrible.

 

At first a show comes on and all the TV big shots are like "Watch our show! It's really great!" and so you do, and then if the show doesn't immediately become a hit then they take it off the air.

 

People are kind of that way, like when you first meet them and they're all nice to your face and then they just totally freeze you out, especially on a first date or something. It's just that I expect a lot more from my TV shows.

 

I want to know who that crooked federal agent shot in the last scene of The Fugitive last year. I want to know where that baby came from on the last episode of Lois & Clark. I want to know what happened to the Wiseman's when they ran out of the kitchen before federal agents stormed their house at the end of Now & Again.

 

And I hate those reunion movies that happen like 10 or 15 years later. Who wants to see a fat, retired Steve Austin living on a houseboat in 1993? Or David Banner getting killed falling out of a helicopter in 1989? It's just stupid. And yet, I can't help watching.

 

I take TV shows too seriously, I think. More seriously than I actually take my real life, anyway. When I was a kid I watched The Six Million Dollar Man and then went outside and ran in slow motion while humming the theme song. Or I watched The Incredible Hulk and then I went and put on a shirt too small for me so I could bust out of it. But now, if I like a show, I tape every episode and memorize every bit of minutiae and trivia about the characters and the actors.

 

In the old days, the people who made TV shows didn't want you to do that. Any time a script called for it, they'd give a character a new brother or cousin, or a whole different backstory. They especially like to do this with children, like when the show starts getting popular they just add a baby to the cast. But it also can happen at the beginning of a show before they decide who they want all the characters to be, like how on one of the very first episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, when Barney calls Andy "Cousin Andy", what was that?

 

I think in the future there will be technology that allows you to watch all the episodes of a TV show and then, using sophisticated computers, predict what future episodes might have looked like if they'd ever been made. And then we can see what happened to Star Trek: Voyager when it got back to Earth, or what happened to Sam after he went back to 1969 and told Beth that Al was still alive in Vietnam.

 

Some big Hollywood hotshot might read this one day and say "Oh yeah? You think you could do better?" Actually, I do. I would give more control to the directors and writers. I would give a show a chance to build an audience, or move shows around the schedule so much. I wouldn't copy shows so much, like all those shows that came out to copy The Cosby Show or Friends. I would take off the crappy shows that no one watches anymore.

 

I love TV. I think it's the greatest invention since the moveable type printing press was introduced 1500 years ago. Except that one led to a lot of people learning how to read, and one led to a lot of people not learning how to read. I just don't like how the crazy people have taken over my TV.