Uncle Orson Reviews Everything - 2025

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Read More of Uncle Orson Reviews Everything...

If, unlike me, you actually have a life, you can easily avoid the TV screen and the offerings on cable. But I'm a tired old man and I love my recliner that faces the big screen.

I write on a laptop perched on a lapdesk, and the television, muted, is generally showing something while I work. When I take a break, I often unmute and catch a few minutes of a decent game show or pick up in the middle of an episode of NCIS, Bones, Castle, or Elementary.

Until the hell of October programming and advertising.

Yes, Halloween comes at the end of October, and yes, the movie theaters are all showing the newest identical gore fests for people who take pleasure in watching gruesome, macabre, and sadistic films.

But why should I, peacefully working and relaxing at home, be forced to see the ads for every hideous scarefest coming to a theater near me?

Since TV programmers schedule their commercials at roughly the same times, so even inveterate flippers like me will end up seeing SOMEBODY'S ad, I have to catch many seconds of movie trailers that I would pay good money and stand in line NOT to see.

Then there are the movie channels, which ALL go into full hell mode through the month. Sure, it's fine to rerun the Harry Potter movies, because they have stories and characters and I still enjoy them (except for the stupidly stretched-out Deathly Hallows, boringly divided into two parts.)

But channel flipping in October is like having my home invaded by sadists. I do not and never will care about zombies or vampires. They repel my brain and always have. I do not understand why a disturbingly large portion of the American audience considers them entertaining.

When regular programming is being poisoned by horror, I can safely retreat into cooking shows, right?

Sure -- unless there's a competition between bakers to produce the most foul-looking Halloween dessert imaginable.

If it weren't for the infinite reruns of Beat Bobby Flay, I'd have nowhere to turn. Flay is unfailingly kind and patient, and he's a good cook, except when he upends a whole bottle of wine into a sauce or a pressure-cooking meat dish. Why not allow the other ingredients to have a say? But most chefs do that -- along with insisting that red meat must be savagely undercooked. I like eating meat that is cooked enough that I don't expect the prey animal to look up at me with reproachful eyes while red juices dribble down my chin.

In other words, there can be horror in any kind of show. But during October, I'm grateful to the cooking shows that don't assume that we want to be grossed out because it's October.