Battle Royalle: What's playing in our house

Last week was pho and high school musicals. This week, it is the four* crappy television shows I sit through regularly. Yes, this is grumpy parent rant and it is also a subject that I shouldn't have an informed opinion on.

Way back in the 70s, if it was on TV, you could watch it. There was no "I love this episode so I am going to watch only this episode again and again and complain if we have to stop in the middle of a show I have seen 50 times" like there is today with cable TV and DVRs. Left to there own devices, my kids would watch exactly 4 shows - with special emphasis on a few episodes of each show, all of them on Disney. Here they are in order from ugh, not again to tolerable. If you have to watch these shows repeatedly, I feel your pain.

Jessie: I hate the premise of the show and it doesn't help that the repeated "Hey, Jessie oohho ohh" of the theme song will rattle in your head for days. Super rich jet-setting New Yorkers adopt a bunch of kids and basically leave them in New York to be raised by a nanny and a sarcastic butler. Hijinks ensue. Sound a little like The Nanny? This was created by one of The Nanny's producers.

Shake It Up: Two best friends in high school are also on a local dance show. One is dumb, the other is smart. Hijinks ensue. It's more tolerable than Jessie, but not much. Plus, one of the leads in the show goes by one name like Cher or Madonna. Your age shouldn't end in "teen" if you are going to go by one name.

Austin and Ally: Down in beautifully sunny Miami, a male teen singing sensation, his shy female best friend/song writer, and two other friends go to school, write songs and perform. Hijinks ensue. For the most part, I find the dancing and music on this show awful. The two sidekick friends make it watchable. The female sidekick gets fired from a job in most episodes and the male sidekick friend is so over the top goofy that he can be funny. He occasionally gets into smack-off type insult fights with another character and they can also be amusing. Under no circumstances take this as a recommendation to watch the show. It is still a sit through only if you must kids show.

Dog With A Blog: Maybe it's because I have a blog too, maybe because the parents aren't morons, or maybe it's because this is essentially ALF with a talking dog instead of an alien puppet. The father looks familiar. I think he's been in commercials. The mother is Beth Littleford who used to be a reporter on The Daily Show. Anyhow, out of the four shows that seem to run on a continuous loop when the kids watch TV, this is the best one. It's pretty close to a traditional network sit-com and you don't feel yourself getting dumber like you do when Jessie is showing.

*There used to be a 5th show, Good Luck Charlie but that seems to have fallen out of favor. The series ended and I think that killed it for the kids. It was a fairly standard sit-com that would fall on the higher end of this tolerable scale.