No Shame: My Boys
Posted by Cristin
December 27th, 2006 at 12:57pm
In Great Feats of Strength Guilty Pleasures
My college roommate Allison introduced me to the concept of No Shame during our senior year. Living in our sorority house surrounded by a dozen girls who were each in various stages of denial about their alcoholism, there was very little that Allison and I found true shame in. Had to leave your medieval lit class to throw up because you drank too much the night before? No shame. Allowed a boy whose name you didn't know to see your underwear? No shame. Took your beer into the shower so you could pregame while gettin prettied up? Ain't no shame in that, Allison would tell us. She was wise beyond her years. Even though we are separated by hundreds of miles and the mason-dixon line, I try to keep Allison's Ain't No Shame spirit alive in everything I do. And that's why I have no problem telling you that I watch TBS's original series My Boys, and I love it.
One of my more obnoxious philosophies in life is to automatically hate anything that is being directly marketed at me. This, for example, is why I don't shop at Urban Outfitters. And it's also why I should despise a show about a sassy 20something who's a sports writer on a show "About how women think… when they think like a guy." At any given moment, 20% of my brain power is devoted to basic human functions (walking without falling, not insulting strangers on the street for their "fashion" taste), 30% is devoted to counting down to when MTV premieres the new season of The Hills, and Jack Bauer's return, 10% is thinking about what I'm going to eat next, and 40% is consumed with thoughts of David Wright. My Boys was made for me, which means the chances of my hating it were significantly higher than the chances of my hating, say, New Yankee Workshop, the carpentry show that my boyfriend watches with a passion generally reserved for college basketball. A plucky sportswriter on the Chicago Cubs beat using sports metaphors for her dating life and interacting platonically with a group of similarly-minded dudes? Recipe for disaster, right? WRONG!
It's enormously clever, both in the writing and scene editing– as PJ (that's the chick– they even gave her a boys' name, how adorable and unexpected!) is breaking up with her boyfriend, they give you cutaways to her guy friends playing an epic game of Rock Em Sock Em Robots in their favorite bar. And while they fall into the Grey's Anatomy trap of having cheesy voiceovers bookend each episode, they're always sports analogies and are in no way worse than Carrie Bradshaw swooning "I couldn't help but wonder… what if our past is like an ANCHOR… holding us down?"
Final thought: Think Scrubs for baseball fans. Well played, TBS. Well played.
Notice that I, the boyfriend, can lay claim to an impressive 0% of her brain power at any given time. David Wright - 1, actual boyfriend - 0.
Stephen, I love New Yankee Workshop too! Norm Abrams is my hero.
I’m so happy to have found another fan. Few people appreciate the soothing genius that is Norm Abrams constructing a tiger maple highboy. He really is the man.
have you (you being fellow commenters NYW-LB or emla) ever noticed that norm abrams never uses an actual hammer? he’s a power tooler, which is fine, but picking up a hammer now and again would give him a bit more street cred with people like my dad, who is my barometer for all things DIY. another one chuck pelizzari, phd recently introduced me to: dirty jobs. Awesome show.
Dirty Jobs is pretty great (the host is kind of a hottie too).
I like how Norm Abrams loves him some dovetails. Beautiful.
I’m fine with his lack of hammer usage. The impressive part of what he does is figuring out how to best assemble whatever it is that he’s making without exposed nailheads or shoddy work. If that means biscuits and glue instead of a hammer, I’m still impressed. And he does use some hand tools.
I’m familiar with Dirty Jobs, but I don’t really watch it.