A Personal Guide To Watching TV

It is axiomatic that different kinds of TV shows have their specialized audiences, that “Entertainment Tonight,” for example, is watched by people with a fannish or professional interest in show business, or that “The Twilight Zone” is an enduring favorite of science-fiction fans. As a TV viewer, therefore, you should cultivate certain kinds of behavior in accordance with what you watch. Here is a guide to help you achieve your optimum viewing personality.

“AMERICA’S MOST WANTED”

Whenever you’re in the post office, study the “Wanted” posters on the wall carefully and be absolutely certain the criminal on one of them is the person you just saw leaving or who sat next to you in a restaurant that morning. Own a bloodhound. Or at least a Doberman. At the end of each show start thinking about how much your new neighbor looks like one of the featured felons. Reminisce about vigilantes. Take a night class in fingerprinting techniques or forensic odontology. Tell your son case histories instead of bedtime stories. Whenever you see someone double parking, consider making a citizen’s arrest.

“ROSEANNE”

Wonder what Popeye saw in Olive Oyl. Give your spouse a bowling ball for Christmas. Don’t have an exercise regimen, but say that you get plenty of exercise just taking out the garbage. Collect polka records. Debate the relative merits of corn dogs and Polish sausages. Have more hassocks than anyone you know. Drink whatever brand of beer is on sale and buy generic products. Give your friends waffle irons or gravy boats or subscriptions to “Chocolatier” for Christmas. Think of the swimsuit issue of “Sports Illustrated” as weightest propaganda. Think that Valkyries look great but should smile more often. Wonder if Elizabeth Taylor is putting on weight again.

PBS

Have a library card. Worry about nuclear power, endangered species and Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal. Envy the British for their accents. Own a cat named after one of Shakespeare’s minor characters. Go to garage sales looking for Fiestaware, vintage Art Deco objects and Leadbelly records. Prefer jazz to classical music or vice versa. Take up to 20 minutes selecting a wine or cheese. Pronounce the word genre with fearless emphasis. Drink bottled spring water and use an herbal dishwashing liquid. Say that you’ve read Salman Rushdie for years. Get Morton Downey Jr. and Robert Downey Jr. mixed up.

“JEOPARDY”

Be either the kind of person who as a student always raised your hand to answer questions or the kind who never raised your hand but always knew the answers. Belong to seven book clubs and five museums and either disdain MENSA or be a member and make sure everyone knows it. Be irritated by rhetorical questions. Read everything you can, e.g., ingredients labels, the “Congressional Record,” the Yellow Pages, the annual statement of ownership, management, and circulation in magazines, etc. Give someone who has told you that the print culture is dead bookends as a birthday gift. If you’re in college, keep changing your major and refer to yourself modestly as an eclectic abecedarian.

THE DISNEY CHANNEL

Wonder why Fred MacMurray has never won an Oscar. Be able to name the Seven Dwarfs. Drive a vintage station wagon or a Volkswagen camper with Yellowstone National Park, Marineland, Disneyland and Lincoln Museum decals in the back window. Have a Swiss cuckoo clock on the kitchen wall. Build a birdhouse in the shape of a Hopi pueblo for one of the trees in the back yard. Whistle while you work. If you’re under 17, be more interested in horses than in motorcycles. If you’re over 17, be more interested in horses than in cars. Adopt an Alaskan otter. Know what EPCOT stands for. Go hear Ray Bradbury speak. Have a green thumb. Plant a cherry tree on Washington’s birthday. Have gifts for your pets under the Christmas tree.

“ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT”

Know whatever happened to Sonny Tufts. If you’re a woman, wear any perfume endorsed by a movie star. If you’re a man, wear Mitchum. Have a library of movies on videotape, but invite friends over to see an Abbott and Costello or Johnny Mack Brown movie and Mighty Mouse cartoon shown on a 16mm projector. Wonder what’s taking Ted Turner so long to get around to colorizing the pre-Oz sequences in “The Wizard of Oz.” When you buy a new wallet that has display photos of movie stars in it, keep them in the wallet. Love sequels, but by the time they’re up to No. 4 prefer the original.

“NORTHERN EXPOSURE”

Drive an old Ford or Chevy pickup that needs paint, has a gun rack in the back window with a 30-06 in it, and a bumper sticker that reads SAVE THE CHOCOLATE MOUSSE. Live in a town too small to have a single fast food franchise--or dream about moving to one. Wear Pendleton shirts, jeans and mukluks. Refer to your neighborhood store as the trading post. Do your Christmas shopping from an L.L. Bean catalogue. Know how to read a totem pole. Chop wood instead of going to a therapist. Hope that you get a snowmobile for Christmas. Never give up your search for a restaurant where you can get chili made with bear meat. Celebrate on Seward’s Day.

“SISKEL AND EBERT”

Wear a sweater. Pop your own popcorn and pass it out along with Jujyfruits and Raisinets to guests. Claim that Meryl Streep is more attractive than Michelle Pheiffer. Own a VCR (but be unable to remember what the letters stand for). Complain about there not being enough stars for directors on Hollywood Boulevard. Go to a new Italian movie with a terrifically sexy date and don’t even glance at him/her after it has started, and break up if she/he asks what FIN means when it ends. When someone near you in a theater talks, immediately ask the person to be quiet. Know about Roger’s Pulitzer Prize, but if you prefer Gene, don’t mention it to anyone.

“THE TWILIGHT ZONE”

Have a Polaroid snapshot of an unidentified flying object that flew low over your campsite in Yosemite last year. Suspect that Velcro is an alien life form. Vacation in the Bermuda Triangle or Transylvania. Take a date to a planetarium or a seance. Know the difference between Triffids and Tribbles and prefer the latter. Use the word phenomenon at least once a day. Believe in extrasensory perception, telekinesis, precognition and maybe time travel, teleportation and the existence of a Galactic Federation. Win first prize at a Halloween party with your homemade black hole costume. Have some ectoplasm in a jar on the mantle as a conversation piece.

“BEVERLY HILLS, 90210”

Be in high school, preferably an urban one whose buildings might be featured in Architectural Digest. Or, believe that life in high school was the happiest time in your life and reminisce about it constantly, but never go to a reunion unless you drive a Mercedes or Porsche with a car phone and have a deep tan. Have a young, sexy-looking orthodontist and tell him or her they should have copies of Sassy and Dirt in their waiting room. Believe in hard work, talent and inheritances. Sympathize with Maybonne but be glad you don’t have any friends who look like her. Enjoy John Hughes’ movies about teens, but think they’re sort of old-fashioned. If you visit Los Angeles, be uncertain whether to do most of your shopping on Rodeo Drive or Melrose Avenue.

MTV

If you’re a girl, subscribe to Sassy and either use hardly any makeup at all or use more makeup than Tammy Faye Baker. If you’re a boy, own a white ’79 Camaro Z28 with flame markings or a state-of-the-art skateboard. Think of a Grateful Dead album as classical music. Love INXS, Motley Crue, Ratt and Def Leppard, and be a terrible speller. If you’re a girl in your early teens consider changing your name to Darci, Tatjana, or Winona. Buy your pre-pubescent brother a marked-down Fat Boys album for Christmas. Like Adam Curry, but have no idea who Tim Curry is. Worry about bad speakers and the possibility of meeting someone you like who wears a Members Only jacket.

“GERALDO”

Be a behavioral psychologist or a social scientist or an extraterrestrial studying human behavior. Or be divorced or expect to get divorced soon and blame pornography, prostitution, gambling, Nazis, Satanists, rock ‘n’ roll music, or the family doctor, or all of the above. Preen, even if you’re going bald. Don’t know which you find more interesting--sex or murder. If you vacation in Spain, think about running with the bulls in Pamplona, then decide not to. Think that the interviewers on “60 Minutes” are wimps. Be anti-abortion but believe in the death penalty or vice versa. Believe in broader horizons for narrower minds. Be virulently anti-drug, but don’t include alcohol.

“60 MINUTES”

Don’t eat fruit that has been sprayed with pesticides. Always use the safety belt in your car, even if you’re just moving to another parking space on the same block. Believe that the CIA has been responsible for most of the internal dissension in Nicaragua, Albania, and Disneyland. Wonder if you should make an anonymous phone call to the FBI turning in someone you know who has torn the tag off a mattress. Think of Spy as a news magazine. Have a good lawyer and a better accountant. Have a conspiracy theory to explain just about everything, e.g., why Garrison Keillor moved to Denmark. Sue the Better Business Bureau, just in case.

“THIRTYSOMETHING”

If you’re a single woman, fall in love with a married man, be tortured by your feelings, tell yourself that it’s wrong, then decide that it’s right, then be ambivalent, then toss a coin to decide whether or not to have an affair. Spend a restless night wondering which design to choose for your personalized checks. Wish that Architectural Digest had a centerfold. When you’re dieting go to art galleries during your lunch hour. Repaint your kitchen three times until you find the right color, but like the color more because of its name than the way it looks.