A TV Guide to Life: How I Learned Everything I Needed to Know From Watching Television

by Jeff Alexander

Overview

Read Jeff Alexander's posts on the Penguin Blog.

A couch potato’s book of wisdom— 100% commercial free!

Some say that entire generations of Americans are being raised by the television…like that’s a bad thing. Not so, says author Jeff Alexander, long-time television writer, advocate of education by television, and recapper for the popular website Television Without Pity. Here, he offers the ultimate in life lessons as seen on TV. Topics include:

• Saved by the Bell: School on TV

• Somebody Save Me: Super Powers and Magic Spells

• Tell Me Why I Love You Like I Do: Relationships on TV

• Making A Living: The Workplace

• And more

With a smart, snarky style, Alexander guides readers through important lessons gleaned from years of TV reviewing (now in convenient book form!), freeing up a whole new generation to learn other things, like how to cure cancer or solve world hunger…or anything more useful than watching TV (Author’s note: Just joking… there is no such thing).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440629549
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/01/2008
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	409 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

A former staff writer for public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, Jeff Alexander writes about television for the popular website Television Without Pity. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and son.

Table of Contents

Introduction     1
Saved by the Bell: School on TV     7
I'll Be There for You: Friends on TV     25
Tell Me Why I Love You Like I Do: TV Couples     45
What Would We Do, Baby, Without Us?: Parenting     67
Making a Living: The Workplace     85
I'm No Superman: TV Medicine     111
Don't Do the Crime If You Can't Do the Time: Law Enforcement and Crime Solving     127
Moving On Up: Unreal Estate     145
Straightening the Curves, Flattening the Hills: TV Physics     163
Surfing on the Internet and Zapped to Cyberspace: High Technology     181
To Boldly Go: Outer Space and Science Fiction     195
Somebody Save Me: Superpowers and Magic Spells     211
A Different World Than Where You Come From: Spinning Off to a New Life     229
Listen Attentively, I Mean About Future Calamity: The Final Chapter     241
Afterword     257
Acknowledgments     259

Editorial Reviews

Alexander, a writer for notoriously acrid web site Television Without Pity, takes on the common wisdom that television rots your brains by examining the wealth of knowledge he's gained through his lifelong pursuit of television viewing. Sly, wordy and tongue-in-cheek, Alexander offers commentary, insight and information that straddle the line between impassioned viewer and cagey insider. Limiting himself to pure entertainment (no public or educational television here), Alexander distills the influence that scripted dramas and comedies, past and present, have on collective views of school, life, love, jobs, medicine, cops, friends, superpowers and death. While he does raise valid, and funny, points while berating television's glamorous, unrealistic portrayals of doctors, lawyers, cops and a particular group of city-dwelling friends, it's always evident that he's made his living dissecting television-something that may alienate the masses who watch television simply to be entertained, not to fuss over the differences between NBC's fictionalized portrayal on 30 Rock and Studio 60. On the other hand, fellow television writers, industry insiders, critics and true media junkies should find some barbed laughs.
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