"A Billion Options in the Cloud yet Nothing to Watch"

Niche marketing came home to roost last night at our place after our family returned from stuffing ourselves at Chuy's Restaurant.

Our two (nearly) grown children, ages 20 and almost 23, are both at "home," that is, staying with us in our formerly "empty nest" (a crowded two-bedroom apartment that neither has really called home, since we moved to Tennessee as our daughter started her freshman year in college at Lee University). Our son lives where we moved from in Ohio, so we have our two "Clevelanders" (OH and TN, both in Eastern Time Zone) with us for the next week.

Scrolling through Netflix, we struggled to find anything on which all four of us could agree. My wife loves the mystery and intrigue of a Bourne-style movie. My daughter is the rom-com softie/30 Rock fanatic. To be ornery, she was suggesting the Thomas Kinkade/Hallmark Channel collaboration The Christmas Lodge. Our son is known to like the saltier fare, so he kept saying, "I liked Orange is the New Black, but you guys might be offended by some of it."

They turned to me, naturally, because I am enrolled in this class. After pooh-poohing some of my choices, we landed on Freaks and Geeks, which none of us had ever seen. The pilot drags in pacing, but it held our attention sufficiently, since both my wife and I were in junior high in 1980 and remember Homecoming dances that lame. The character who held our attention most effectively was Sam (John Francis Daly), since we watch Bones and know him as Dr. Sweets. So many twinges in his young persona are developed later in his acting.

Still this title did not receive four stars. When Portlandia came on afterward (a fave for my daughter and me), Sally (my wife) got up to take her shower for the evening. She finds the show inane. I had to keep explaining to my short-attention-span son Philip that everytime Carrie and Fred change their hairstyles, they are different characters (i.e. "It's like SNL but with a much smaller cast playing all the parts.") When Abby (our daughter) chose The Office (again), it was time to head to bed.

The age of gathering as a family to watch the TV set in the corner--even with no picture--is officially dead.