Saying Goodbye to Bethenny and Her Other Desperate Friends

About a month ago, Scott and I decided to 86 cable. 

You must be thinking, "Wait, what!?! Cut cable? But what about Mad Men? What about Millionaire Matchmaker? HGTV? How will you live without the petty bickering of the Desperate Housewives of New York City?"

Cable failed us. We briefly discussed cutting down to basic one night after flipping through all 200+ stations and browsing the On-Demand selections and discovering there was Absolutely Nothing to Watch. This happened a few times within a two week period. But I think the turning point for Scott was when he came into the living room one night and caught me enthralled in the depths of either Real Housewives of New York City, Real Housewives of New Jersey, or Bethenny Getting Married – it was something on Bravo – oh, don’t scoff, you know you secretly watch these programs too – AND LOVE THEM .

Him: “Why? Why? WHY do you watch this crap?”

Me: “Because there’s nothing else on.” (In my head: “And because it is THE MOST AWESOME CRAP IN THE WORLD.”)

The next day, we knocked our cable to the most basic of basic packages and we signed up for Netflix. Did you know you can now watch Netflix On-Demand through your Wii or Playstation? Because I didn’t. I'm guessing I'm one of the last people on earth who didn't know that. And all the options? We have watched more documentaries in the past month than we have in the past year. (Yes, we are nerds who watch documentaries about the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday nights.)

The thing is, I realized this that I don’t miss cable. I don’t miss it at all. Mostly because we're watching The Wire which is my newest Favorite Show Ever, but also because I'm spending less staring vacantly at a screen. I don’t just flip it absently and zone out to whatever looks vaguely interesting *cough* Real Housewives *cough*. Although I did for a brief moment mourn the loss of getting to see  Ramona making the crazy eyes every week. I guess I could just watch this , the walk that will haunt my dreams forever. Plus, that's why God invented Hulu, isn't it?