I remember distinctly when I purchased what would be my first copy of ‘Sword of Shannara.’ I was in 6th grade, it was a paperback at Wal-Mart, the cover was the Hildebrant brothers, and I had not yet read Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit, thought I had seen the Hobbit cartoon. I wasn’t sure what to expect, my only fantasy experiences at that time were ‘A Wizard of Earthsea‘ and the first two books of Brian Jacques’ Redwall series. I still don’t know what to expect, I must have read the first forty pages six or seven time, eventually lost/threw away/sold the book, I’m not sure. Waited a few years, bought another copy that I never read, and then I think I gave that copy to a brother, or it was also lost/thrown away/ or sold. Clearly it was a very memorable experience for me. The Earthsea series in the meanwhile I’ve read through at least four times, and I made it through 15 Redwall books before I feel that I aged out of that particular genre.

But now comes this series on MTV of all places. I’m just old enough to know that MTV used to show music videos. At the time I was a child, I recall watching MTV but mostly VH1 at my aunt’s house and there being about an hour of music videos everyday then non-stop showings of ‘I Love the (insert decade here)’ show. I also remember being bored at my aunt’s house a lot, which was in no way a fault of my aunt’s.

So anyway, this ‘Shannara Chronicles‘ show on MTV, I like it, but I like a lot of bad TV. I can’t tell objectively if it is good or not, but it will most likely work it’s way into my very tight TV watching schedule. It isn’t anything unexpected, stupidly good-looking young adults doing stupid things and trying to take their clothes off alot, that’s not really the part I like. Manu Bennett, he’s always fun to watch, actors trying to rattle off long names with an odd distribution of vowels and consonants as if they talk like that every day, that’s fun, but none of it is particularly exciting, I don’t love the show, but I’ll watch it.

There are some shows that I do love, but stopped watching. I only kept up with ‘Vikings‘ for a season, ‘Hell on Wheels‘ lapsed after two seasons and 3 episodes. ‘Ripper Street‘ and ‘Copper‘ also only for a season, and I did really enjoy those, way more than Shannara. So why am I drawn to terrible television? I know I said I can’t tell, but I assume the shows I like are all terrible, my wife tells me so.

Maybe because it’s easy to watch? I got quite a bit of drawing done while watching ‘Shannara,’ I get almost none done while watching ‘The Expanse.’ Who knows? But two years ago there was only one must watch show on my list, and even though it was essentially a Batman rip-off I had to watch ‘Arrow‘ because it was DC. Now I’m up to four of DC’s seven series, ‘The Expanse,’ ‘Elementary,’ and this damn Shannara show. Not to mention binge watching ‘Murder She Wrote,’ and ‘Supernatural‘ at night with the wife. Where has my life gone wrong that I’m watching this much television?