Who needs the Huxtables?

I remember when I was a kid, I would get very excited on Sunday nights and couldn't wait for The Wonderful World of Disney to come on. And then there was The Cosby Show and Who's the Boss, silly little sitcoms that we would watch together. And my family loved Quantum Leap and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Watching TV was always some good quality family time.

I don't watch much TV with the husband. Our interests are very different when it comes to what we want to get from the idiot box. He is all about the news and any show pertaining to UFOs, mafia, World War II or the JFK assassination. Every so often, I will try to watch something with him but it will be the time that he is engrossed in a show about Stephen Hawking explaining how Einstein's theory of relativity isn't correct and something about the point of no return in a black hole and frankly it makes me feel like an idiot. So I'll wander back to the living room and put on something mindless that usually consists of someone being voted off or dumped.

Honestly, I don't mind that much. I mean sometimes I get a little jealous of my friends who tell me that their husbands actually enjoy watching Grey's Anatomy. And I don't question those guys' manhood at all. But the fact that my man doesn't watch 24 or Lost or Flash Forward with me sometimes is a little sad. I mean, if he gets what an event horizon is, shouldn't he be able to explain to me what the hell is happening on that island?

But maybe it's for the best. I do enjoy my alone time with the TV, it's quiet. And if he were watching with me, it wouldn't be. The gift of silence is not one of my husband's positive traits. And the keyword being quiet, I don't watch a whole lot with the kiddos either. Well other than Gossip Girl and only because Alli forces me to do so.

So this weekend he was watching The Science Channel (my favorite), as usual, and this show came on, Mantracker. And the whole family was hooked. Even down to the 5-year old. And they were all oohing and ahhing over Mantracker and I was surprised that no one had seen it before. Because I've seen it, several times. It's always on when I finally crawl into bed late at night and the TV is on aforementioned least favorite channel of mine and my sweet man is snoring away because obviously he was watching something educational beforehand and who can stay awake for that crap.

So the family is obsessed...and happy that not only is the show on, but there is a marathon, a whole 8 hours of a man on a horse tracking his "prey" in the wild. Riveting, yes? Actually, you'd be surprised. It's great stuff. And Kathryn constantly looks out the car window to see if Mantracker's hiding in the woods, she may be smitten with him. That or I might have a new angle on getting little ones to stay in their rooms at night.

So not only was there a Mantracker marathon this weekend, there was a Deadliest Warrior one too. And we're pretty hooked there as well. Emma especially. Which concerns me a lot little. This show takes "warriors" from different time periods and pits them against each other in battle. They do an extensive analysis of their weapons and fighting tactics. There are a lot of pig carcasses that don't do well on this show.

After all the data is gathered, they run a computer simulated battle to see who wins. So the Spartan beats the Ninja, the Apache beats the Gladiator and William Wallace runs a sword through Shaka Zulu. It's brilliant and the best thing on Spike since MXC, which was another questionable show that our family loved to view together.

I recently saw that one of the big 3 networks is trying to bring back family movie night. I think that's great and all but we'll probably pass. We'll got all sorts of quality bonding time going on already. And if we can't find something inappropriate to watch together, well we can always fall back on ESPN.