Tag Archives: psycho

Well my friends after a coupled of weeks of seriousness something a little less serious, unless you take creepy things more seriously than you should. Yes I could be writing more about Gettysburg or other military History tonight. Likewise I could be writing about pressing social issues or world events, faith and religion, politics or baseball. I do promise that I will do some of that soon.

However, I don’t do a lot of television. I am not a fan of a lot of the new shows on today. I can watch Seinfeld, Boston Legal, MASH, any of the Star Trek series, The X-Files, Cheers, House MD or any number of older television series for hours on end. I also love The Simpson’s, Family Guy, Southpark and American Dad and the same is true with many other series.

However, I do not enjoy what is referred to as “reality TV.” The fake nature of this artificial reality bugs the shit out of me. Truthfully I deal with enough real reality every day not to want to deal with the contrived reality of Duck Dynasty or anything else of the genre.

Neither am I a fan of soap operas, even those of the horror genre. Unfortunately between reality TV and various soap operas it seems that much of television has become a wasteland of prepackaged formulas designed to keep non-thinking people coming back.

Likewise I refuse to watch any supposedly “Christian” television. I cannot think of much more that is less Christian than I see on most Christian networks. The fact that most extol the voices or pride, avarice, greed, and even violence all baptized with carefully selected verses of scripture and done in the name of God makes me think that they are the tools of the Devil himself.

It is hard to believe that in an era where there are hundreds of television shows to watch on any given night that I have nothing to watch unless I put in a DVD or BlueRay disc of something that is now off the air.

However, that being said I have always loved creepy and suspenseful shows. I loved The X-Files, which I already mentioned. Likewise always I loved The Twilight Zone, Tales From the Crypt, Tales from the Dark Side and the long running Criminal Minds. I love the creepy, suspenseful and the sometimes somewhat twisted humor and irony of these shows.

However, it is been a while since I have seen any really creepy and suspenseful new shows. I am sure that there are some out there but it has taken me time to find a couple new shows that I really like. That search my friends ended last week when my wife Judy insisted that I watch Bates Motel. I loved it.

Following it there was another show, Those Who Kill. I loved it as well. Very suspenseful, creepy and well done. You cannot ask for much more in two shows that run back to back.

Bates Motel is basically the prequel to the legendary Hitchcock film Psycho. Last year Judy realized that her decoration of our master bathroom in a Rubber Ducky pattern was not interesting to me. So for my birthday when I was still stationed in Camp LeJeune she redecorated that bathroom in a Psycho theme. I loved it. When I cam home and saw it I laughed myself sick. That being said there are some nights that when I have to get up to do my business that I am taken aback.

Bates Motel is really well done, as is Those Who Kill. I think that the former is really creepy because of the whole story and the fact that we meet Norma Bates, an overprotective mother who happens to be kind of hot.  The latter is about a detective and a professor of forensic psychology who track down serial killers. Both shows are creepy, very well done and very suspenseful. In other words they appeal to me.

I think a big part of the reason I like these shows is because they demonstrate the human condition in a manner not seen in other places. We live in a beautiful but at times scary world.

With that I have to take my attention back to the new Bates Motel followed by Those Who Kill.

Peace and Suspense,

Padre Steve+