A Manly Post About Manly TV Shows ...

Okay, so Hit 40 has been a little concerned about my blog lately. Photos of pretty fall colors and talk about HGTV and decorating and stuff has her concerned about the lack of manliness of this blog. She may have a point. I included a couple of pics of hotties in my last post, but it was still basically about decorating.

So, I thought I should fix this problem today. Actually I thought about REALLY concerning Hit 40 by blogging about my love of the Gilmore Girls and Gossip Girl. Hey, don’t judge, at least I gave up watching The Hills. I just won’t be a part of any attempt to replace Lauren Conrad with that Kristin Cavallari skank.

But, I decided to go in a different direction. Instead I will talk about my favorite manly shows on TV right now.

Mad Men….

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t really fall in the “manly” category completely, but given what lying, cheating assholes all the men are in this show, and the way they treat women, I would call it pretty manly. Of course, the show is set in the early 1960’s, so you would expect women to be treated this way. I mean, you do want it to be realistic, don’t you?

Anyway, I freaking love this show. I love the decadent and depraved lives these people live. I love that there really isn’t a single major character on the entire show who has any redeeming qualities whatsoever. I mean every single one of them is a cheater a liar or just all around shitty person. It’s awesome!

All these people do is, make lots of money, drink scotch or some other hard liquor (starting late mornings while at work and not stopping until they fall asleep at night), smoke (in the elevators, hospital waiting rooms, cars, schools, bars, restaurants and any other public place you can think of), have sex (mostly with people they’re not married to) and use people. Tell me that isn’t every man’s dream life?

And I also love the fact while January Jones, who plays Betty Draper (the worst mother EVER!) is insanely hot…


She is actually upstaged by the voluptuous Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan Holloway…



Show #2 is Sons of Anarchy...

Okay, with all the shootouts, sex, orgies, fist fights, cussin’ and sposions, this is definitely a manly TV show. I mean, this show basically is sitting unshaven on the couch in his ratty old boxers watching a football game and drinking cheap beer. But, once you get past all that stuff, this show is actually pretty deep. The writing is excellent as is the depth of the main characters. There’s a reason that this show is beating Jay Leno in the ratings. (Other than the fact that Leno isn’t funny and his show sucks great big green donkey balls.)


Just like the show Sons replaced in FX’s Tuesday 10 pm eastern timeslot, The Shield, (One of my favorite shows of all time) Sons is extremely intense and does a great job of avoiding the temptation of the big blow up. Instead things are allowed to simmer along and the intensity builds every week. The way they allowed the Jax v Clay battle to develop organically is a perfect example of that.

Also like The Shield we basically have a situation where the show’s heroes aren’t good guys at all. But, they are the “not as bad” guys. So how do you make a biker gang, uh, club who are running guns, own a porn production company, blow shit up and kill federal agents the “not as bad” guys? You pit them against a White Supremacist group of course!

Also, the show does a great job of reminding us in different ways that none of these people are good people. Even the guy who everyone thinks of as SAMCRO’s conscience, Jax is a actually a very dark criminal. We were reminded of this in the brilliant scene where he rebuffs the attempts by a federal agent, who’s a pretty dark and slimy character herself, to turn on the Irish and rat people out to save him and the members of his club from prosecution. When Jax asks her if she’s seen Kohn lately (another federal agent who Jax killed in season one and buried somewhere in the desert). It’s right there that we are reminded of how cold and viscous he really is.

As a side note, I would like for everyone in Hollywood to watch that scene mainly for the lighting. It’s possible to make a scene dark, both visually and emotionally, without it being a total damn black out. We could see Jax and the agent, but it was still dark in the room. Very well done!

Also, Ron Pearlman and Katy Segal are both terrific..;




Basically what I love about both of these shows is that they are made for grown ups. And, they treat their audience as grown ups. They don’t talk down to us and they don’t dumb the shows down for people who don’t “get it.” If you aren’t sure what is going on, or what is meant by different words or situations, you can look it up. They aren’t going to take time out of the show to explain things to the slow kids.

Yeah, I know that leads to a certain level of pretentiousness among some viewers. But, right now, given the state of television in this country, I’ll take that over the mindless sit-coms and medical dramas that are basically just remaking the medical dramas from the past like ER or Chicago Hope or St. Elsewhere or all the rest of them.

Of course, I like my share of silly, mindless TV too. But, I do love it when shows like Mad Men and Sons of Anarchy come along and remind us how good TV really can be when they try.