Thanksgiving Marathon Open Thread

This essay is less necessary today than it will be for the rest of the weekend because there is so much ‘special event’ programming between the parade and football, but TV schedulers have this horrible habit on holidays of using ‘Marathons’ to cover their essential laziness and lack of imagination.

Nobody knows lazy like I do and let me tell you what a Marathon is- it’s fighting Persians all day long to save democracy and western civilization and then running 26+ miles to Athens to shout “Nike!” and die.

Without a shoe endorsement contract no less.

Some networks are running their normal schedules, as we are attempting here at DocuDharma, and I give them credit for that as there is nothing better than vegging out all day watching something you like, but nothing worse than getting stuck with 24 hours of A Christmas Story (not that I don’t like Jean Shepard, but after umpty upm years of it even my Dad who is a huge fan is getting tired of Darrin McGavin).

But for the purposes of this essay we’ll be concentrating on the lazy ones and I’ll try to identify the stuff I think doesn’t suck.

Did I mention how much fucking research this was?  You better support it otherwise I’ll just sit on my lazy ass the rest of the weekend.

5 am

I’ll start with VH-1, because it’s one of the earliest.  In fact you’ve probably already missed it.  Between 5 am and 10:30 they’ll be running Jump Start.  I have no idea what this show is or if it’s their normal practice because I never watch VH-1.  Other than that they’re running what appears to be their normal schedule though you couldn’t prove it by me.

I’m pretty sure it’s not ESPN’s general practice to run back to back repeats of Sports Center from 5 am to 3 pm.  Then they run 30 for 30 from 3 pm ’til 7 when the run another Sports Center (probably a live one) before Texas @ Texas A&M.

Then more Sports Center.

6 am

Cake Boss has 21 half hour episodes in total which will allow TLC to show each and every one about 17 times between 6 am and 3 in the morning tomorrow.

Not to mention it’s a total rip off of Ace of Cakes.

7 am

USA starts a House marathon that continues uninterrupted except for The Game Plan, a forgettable movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson at 7 pm and Elf, an equally forgettable movie starring Will Ferrell at 8:30ish until 4 am tomorrow.

7:30 am

AMC is running what is probably the premier movie event of the weekend.  Back to back runnings of The Godfather, Godfather 2 and Godfather 3.  Better bring your sitz for this one.  The first showing ends at 8 pm when they will repeat it again.  On the other hand every thing you need to know about politics you can learn from watching The Godfather–

My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.

Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don’t have men killed.

Oh. Who’s being naive, Kay?

8 am

First up is A&E which is running First 48 continuously until 2 am tomorrow when they will repeat the Crime 360 they took a break for at 11 pm.

If you can tell the difference.

SciFi (and I refuse to spell it any other way) has Bond.

James Bond.

Shaken and not stirred this lasts until 5:30 am and continues again tomorrow.

Good stuff, but not The Godfather.

8:30 am

I have to say I don’t much like Tom and Jerry which I consider one of the most ultra violent cartoons of the golden age (it is the Itchy and Scratchy Show).

Not that many of them pulled any punches or spared any anvils.

Still it never caught my fancy and that’s all that Cartoon Network is showing until 10 pm when Adult Swim takes over with their regular programming with the minor exception of noon and 3:30 pm showings of Bugs Bunny Thanksgiving, a distinctly inferior compilation of clips from much better Warner Brothers cartoons.

HGTV has House Hunters International which is so derivative it doesn’t even have it’s own Wikipedia entry until it’s replaced at 1 pm by House Hunters which does.  They mostly go until 10:30 pm with a break at 6 pm for Amazing Log Homes and at 8 pm for 25 Great Holiday Ideas.

9 am

Animal Planet has Cats 101 until 1 pm when they start showing Dogs 101 and then switch to a semi normal schedule at 7 pm.

Bravo has Top Chef until 4:30 pm  when they switch to Real Housewives of Orange County which they show until they are replaced by Kathy Griffin at 11 pm.

Travel has fill in the blank ___ Paradise until 8 pm when they switch to Extreme ___ fill in the blank which they run until 3 am with the exception of Most Unique McDonalds at 11 pm.

Discovery has Mythbusters straight through until 3 am.  I can’t praise it more highly than to say that this is going to be my ‘go to’ programming.

Bradys, Bradys, Bradys on TV Land until 6 pm when we get to see three episodes of the evil Anna Sheridan before the She Devil takes over, replaced at 2 am by the Cos.

Tru TV, another channel I never watch, is presenting Dominick Dunne’s Power, Privilege, and Justice before 3 hours of Forensic Files starting at 3 pm, followed by 4 hours of Smoking Gun Presents: World’s Dumbest Criminals until 10 pm.

9:30 am

Band of Brothers is a pretty powerful mini series and Spike will be showing it.  Another sitz since it lasts until 9 pm.

The Big Finish

At 10 am TNT starts running The Closer until 4 pm.

At 11 am MSNBC starts running Prison Porn.  At least CNBC’s Biographies (which start at the same time and end at 4 pm) have more class though some of the documentary programming that takes over from there is just as bad.

At noon FX starts Home Alone in a continuous loop until it mercifully ends at 12 pm.

TBS will be be showing Without a Paddle and Without a Paddle: Nature’s Calling back to back also starting at noon

History Channel will be filling its 8 to 11 pm prime time with Pawn Stars.

I’m not kidding about this being a piece of work.

6 hours of research.

If you want more, please indicate that you read it.