The Case for Bad TV

I’ve never been known for my discerning taste when it comes to television-watching habits, especially when I’m working. As a writer and painter, one might rightly assume there would be music playing in the background as I create, but they would be wrong. Since I was a young girl, I have been totally distracted by music — be it vocal or instrumental — and I find myself actively listening and then humming first the melody and then the French horn part to whatever is playing. That, however, is not the case with bad television.

As I sit down to create, I fire up Netflix, Hulu, Max, or BritBox to choose the day’s programming. Today, television and streaming services can be so hit-or-miss that it has become much easier for me to find bad episodic shows to accompany my painting or writing sessions. Note to self: When looking for something to watch, stay away from the red bookcase and my mother’s VCR tapes, which hold examples of good television. Each one is a gem that she recorded in the 1990s, and they are filled with amazing movies and shows, like the crime drama Wiseguy (with the added bonus of commercials from the era). But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I can almost hear you scoff, gentle reader, as you think, Who could possibly work to the sounds of television? Many people work while listening to the radio. And I would say to you that television is merely radio with pictures. And these pictures can be ignored, particularly if the set lies just beyond the easel and you have to peer around the canvas to engage with the televised images. To me, television shows become white noise, something that is there, yet not there. And choosing the right program is the key to making this happen.

I can tell you what doesn’t work. Sports. Good movies that have interesting plots, settings, and characters. Sports movies. Good TV shows that have interesting plots, settings, and characters. Shows with laugh tracks, and game shows creating too much noise. Annoying reality shows, and even more annoying Hallmark movies. Documentaries never make the cut because I too often find myself looking at the screen and saying, sometimes aloud, “Why, I didn’t know that!”

One working definition of bad television might be anything you can watch and fall asleep to and not care if you’ve missed an episode or three in the middle of the night. The soundtrack is unobtrusive. The plot does not involve a strict adherence to story, character, or even setting. You can jump right back into a series and for a split-second wonder why a character has disappeared, but you don’t care enough to rewind to find out why they’re gone.

The perfect shows are those that allow me to engage in parallel play with the show. I’m much like the toddler who can sit in the sandbox with another toddler and be very happy entertaining myself as long as the sand stays behind the invisible line I’ve drawn. I don’t want to know what the other toddler is doing, whose only purpose in the sandbox is to allow me the freedom to play because I can see that he is playing, and it seems safe. And like a toddler, I will periodically glance up and look past the canvas when I hear something that either bugs or interests me, but I will then return to my painting.

I tried to watch Battlestar Galactica while painting but found myself too taken with several of the characters, so, reluctantly, I had to turn it off. Same problem with any show set in Iceland or the Outer Hebrides, where my fascination revolved around the landscape as I imagined myself watching lava flow from a volcano or wandering along windswept beaches. A firm no on any version of Little Women because I can quote the dialogue. There is an ill-defined sweet spot for my version of bad television, and like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who famously said it while trying to define pornography in 1964, “I know it when I see it.”

Lately, one show has become my go-to painting show, and not just because there are many seasons. I’m excited each time I sit at the easel pondering which episode to put on that I can then ignore while experimenting with colors.

SEAL Team is a perfect painting show for me. While the Bravo One team is heading to yet another assignment in a rocky desert environment, I’m choosing my brushes. By the time the Seals engage with the enemy — who always come up behind Bravo One in little trucks with guns mounted on the roofs of the cabs — I’m squeezing the paint onto the palette. I work on my underpainting to the sounds of gunfire, flash bombs, and grenades, and then stand back to try to figure out what the heck is going wrong with my painting as Bravo One gets back in the transport plane to head home. Bravo One and I are actively engaged in parallel play. I don’t interfere with their missions, and they don’t give me advice. Win-win.

Were I more introspective or meeting regularly with a psychotherapist, this choice of show might give me pause. What does my show selection say about me? Am I enamored with military battles and warfare? Lest you become concerned, I believe it’s as simple as what I posited earlier. This is white noise to me. It’s my radio with pictures. One person’s Vivaldi is another person’s Bravo One mission. It’s about sound that recedes into the background. It’s about freeing space in my brain to work on creating what is in front of me. I take solace in knowing the Bravo One team members will escape, basically unscathed, because they are the stars of the show, so I can paint without fretting about their safety. I feel sorry for the enemy because they will lose. It’s in the script.

I’ve recently discovered NCIS and its endless spin-offs. It’s a kinder, gentler SEAL Team with fewer automatic weapons. I do have to put up with the ear worm of a theme song at the beginning and end of each episode, but then I’m home free. There are maybe one million episodes populated with people whose names I don’t and won’t know. I can spend an entire afternoon with the paintbrush and power through five episodes of NCIS without remembering a thing that happened on the show. And I can rest in the knowledge that, for at least the next six months, I’ve found my other toddler in the sandbox.

Rachel Dickinson is the author of several books; her most recent is The Loneliest Places: Loss, Grief, and the Long Journey Home. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic, Outside, Men’s Journal, Aeon, Salon, and Audubon.

This article is featured in the March/April 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.