I Love "Drop Dead Diva"!

Yes, I know, not my usual flavour of show. But, as with so many shows, this is all Luis' fault!

A few Sundays ago, a new off-season show (guaranteed to keep people as television junkies throughout their days) started called Drop Dead Diva. At first I thought this is some wierd teenage depressing soap opera like The Life of the American Teenager (total garbage) or 90210 but this surprised me. Luis liked the premise and when he told me about it, I could not miss the opportunity.

A young, cute, perfectly figured woman is killed and in a mix up where she thought she'd be going to heaven, she reached forward, hit the enter key on a keyboard and ended up alive again... in the not perfectly figured, young or cute body of another woman. The person she becomes? A successful lawyer who earns big money, has quite the brain, weighs more than I do and is not fast-tracking it to becoming a model.

Here is the fun part: the diva, Deb, cute, sexy, brainless and vacuous, now has Jane's overweight, normal, brainy and completely brilliant mind (and has her own assistant), job and life. Usually in these kinds of ideas, the brain and personality is that of the original owner's but the body is someone else's who should have died and miraculously hasn't. The producers must have figured (and rightly so) that Deb could not possibly keep Jane's job if she did not have Jane's lawyer's knowledge and reasoning.

Good thing!

Jane clearly would not have survived as a model. Ever see the "plus size" models? They are all the lowest possible end of "plus" and even then for some it is a stretch. No one is modeling the size 26 stuff, they all model the size 14 or 16. (This is my way of saying we aren't really this stupid. The average plus sized consumer has to be seeing the same thing I am. And I'm still, unfortunately, a plus size consumer!)

Anyway, the episode that aired last night was wonderful. It made me think and it made me feel strongly about things (not that this is ever an issue for me, but even so...), and it was funny and fun. All very important qualities for a good telly show. I can't watch some of the mindless junk that Luis engages in, and you know what a snob I am - if it has a laugh track, it is lowbrow and tasteless and I want to know nothing about it.

On the other hand, he watches stuff that is the other end of the spectrum - boring, humourless and too dramatic - to wit, The Life of the American Teenager and... um... I can't think of another title. The first one is about a teenager who gets pregnant and keeps the baby. Stop. Already I've lost interest. What a great way to completely derail your life. And here it is - depressing telly for the whole family!

I will admit that if it keeps any teenagers from getting pregnant, I'll sing its praises to the heavens! I will still not watch it, however. It really just is not my kind of viewing.

I happen to agree with Howard Stern (not my favourite person but has a liberal mindset) that if you don't like something, don't have anything to do with it. Except paying taxes. That you have to suck it up and deal with it. But viewing, listening, playing or engaging in something you don't like is silly but so is boycotting it. Everyone should get to watch or listen to whatever he or she is into watching or listening.

Just don't watch or listen to it when I'm around!