Watch This. Don't Watch That.

So I've finished my latest long-term sub position and the only absences available in the per diem pool leave something to be desired. Unless I'm willing to make minimum wage teaching wood shop to urban high school seniors. (I'm good, thanks.) So what's a girl to do with all of this time in between working out, job hunting and applying for unemployment? Television, of course. A girl's best friend.

There are two shows in particular that I want to discuss, and they couldn't be more different. One is a show that I unfairly abandoned before even giving the pilot a chance; the other I realize I should've abandoned weeks ago. Let's break them each down respectively.

Breaking Bad 

I admit I sometimes judge books by their covers, movies by their posters and people by their faces. Television is no different. I'd been told about this show for over two years by pretty much everyone I know, as well as people I apparently knew at one point but are not ringing any bells on my News Feed. I continued to disregard their avid recommendations. This is their main character? Yeah, no. Archetypal guy show, I said, for sure.

Before I say anything, let's run down the basic framework of this show. Middle-aged chemistry teacher is diagnosed with cancer and starts cooking meth with a junkie ex-student to provide for his family postmortem. Said family? A brother-in-law in the DEA, a son with CP, and a lovely wife with an inappropriately low level of suspicion about the whole operation. Cue druglords, murder and overdose.

If I were a network executive, there's no way this pilot would even be made. On paper, it's a sick and twisted not-ready-for-TV plotline. But - you guessed it - I'm obsessed. I'm literally losing sleep over it. The writing is genius and suspenseful, the directing and camerawork is so creative, and the actors disappear into their characters.

Let's play a quick game called Things I've Said Out Loud to an Empty Room. I'll go first. "Oh my goddd." "Jesus Christ, get outta there." My personal favorite? Escaping in barely a whisper, "How does she knowwww?"

Oh, also? There's this eye candy to enjoy in all his law-breaking glory. 

Girls

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the kind of show that people love because everyone else loves it. I'm guilty! I bought into the whole masquerade, too. An updated, quirky Sex and the City for twenty somethings? Sure! 
  

Then the weirdness set in. I realized I don't relate to a single one of these characters. The shy paranoid one, the Bohemian hipster one, the whiny self-involved one, and the one that looks like she just stepped off the runway. Their problems in any given episode involve living in the city, having graphic weird sex with and/or marrying strangers, doing drugs in nightclubs, banging openly gay men, and tangential monologues in inappropriate situations. None of which I can personally relate to either.

Then there's the nudity. Now I'm not a total prude; a naked body is a naked body. But I'd have to conservatively estimate the ratio of unnecessary to necessary nudity on this show to be about 10:1. It's usually unprompted, inappropriate and painfully awkward.

Like I said, there was a good period of time where I was riding the Girls bandwagon. The critics love Hannah (Lena Dunham)'s fearlessness to write, direct and star in her own provocative scenes. "Good for her!" people say, "She's unapologetic for who she is and shines a spotlight on real women's bodies and insecurities." And if she's helping insecure people or people who feel like they're not represented on television, I'm being honest ... that's awesome.

For me, personally, I'm signing off. I can't watch another minute of this show. I refuse to watch her whine one more time about her problems while dancing around in a hideous onesie jumper, banging weird hot hippie strangers on a Sunday afternoon, then playing ping pong naked for no reason. Can't do it. I shouldn't have wasted my time watching a season and a half's worth of episodes thinking I'd find something I relate to or connect with anywhere in this show.

I might've just been watching for shots of this guy. It's a strong possibility.

The lesson here? I find more relateable emotion in the eyes of a crystal meth cook than a quirky twentysomething.

Wait..... what?