I don’t watch much television. That’s not a fake-snob-British-accent Madonna “I don’t let my kids watch TV because it’s beneath them and retards their intelligence, and besides they might accidentally run across video of me writhing on the floor in my underwear” attitude.   I do watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for a daily dose of sanity, baseball games appear pretty regularly, and if I walk through the living room during a rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond, I won’t be moving for 30 minutes.

What I meant to say is that I don’t watch too much primetime series television. Getting wrapped up in a series requires a commitment of time that I prefer to bestow on other activities.  So I have never watched an episode of Mad Men, Lost or Friday Night Lights, and my only attempt to watch 24 lasted less than half a season, until my suspension of disbelief lost a brutal slugfest with my conscience.  I have no tolerance for cheesy crime shows, where serial killers and criminal masterminds seem to lurk behind every doorway, and cases must be solved by mediums, fake psychics or people who talk to ghosts. (My theory is that we’ve never been invaded by aliens because they picked up CBS’ signal and decided Planet Earth is too dangerous.)  If it wasn’t for the fascinating bromance between Greg House and James Wilson, I’d be AWOL on medical dramas.  I wouldn’t watch reality TV if you paid me (but go ahead and make me an offer). Despite my reputation as an easy laugh, I remain curiously unamused by The Office, I consider Curb Your Enthusiasm to be Seinfeld without punch lines, and I feel only slightly guilty about not watching any of the latest season of 30 Rock, despite my undying love for Tina Fey. (Who turns 40 today.  Happy birthday, T. Yes, we’re on a first-initial basis.)

On Tuesday nights between 9 and 11, however, don’t even think about calling me on the phone, because I’ll be curled up on the couch watching my two favorite shows, Glee and The Good Wife.  I may be the only hetero male in America who will admit that.

I can understand why some people object to Glee. It’s a bunch of actors in their mid-20s pretending to be kids in their mid-teens, singing and dancing to cheesy pop songs. It’s black, white and Asian kids, jocks, nerds, gays and the handicapped all singing together in a massive rainbow coalition that would normally have me snickering in the back row and shooting spitballs. It’s story lines that dangle so precariously between soap opera and camp that a shark is required on set at all times for jumpability, like the subplot about the head of the cheerleaders and the abstinence club getting pregnant and her boyfriend thinking he did it even though he’s a virgin, and she gets kicked out of the cheerleaders and out of her family’s home and dumped by the boyfriend – you got all that?  

Yet I love every minute of it.  Maybe it’s because I have a daughter the same age as the actors and another the same age as the characters, so they all feel like family. I love all of them.

I love the self-centered diva with two dads, Rachel (who is being romanced convincingly by a real-life gay man, so fuck you, Newsweek); I love sweet but slow-on-the-uptake Finn; I love the Mohawked punk Puck who does a mean Sammy Davis; I love pregnant, abandoned Quinn Fabray and want to embrace her and tell her everything will be OK  (in my mind, that image isn’t creepy at all); I love sassy Mercedes and scornful Santana; I love Brittany, the dimmest of the dim bulbs who, when advised to “use protection,” asks, “You mean like a burglar alarm?”  Sure, some tight-asses might complain that the characters verge on stereotypes, and I get that, but the show provides enough nuances to counterbalance that perception.

I love the truly amazing Jane Lynch, who I’d pay to see reading the phone book.  As bad-ass cheerleader coach Sue Sylvester, she always appears just in the nick of time to squelch any p.c. smarmfest with a pointed putdown; I always chortle when she addresses the handicapped kid as “Wheels.”  At least twice an episode, the writers place some brilliantly cutting remark on a batting tee, and Lynch knocks it out of the park.

And I especially love Chris Colfer as sweet, tortured Kurt.  (Holly Robinson had a nice post the other day about watching Glee with her young son and teaching him tolerance.)  At first, I thought his character leaned too close to stereotype.  Now, however, his difficult but loving relationship with his father (played by sitcom vet Mike O’Malley) is one of the highlights of the show.  Colfer’s performance in a recent episode, where Kurt tried to impress his blue-collar dad by dressing as a trucker to perform an hilariously deadpan Mellencamp then belted out “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy, was so jaw-droppingly good that I thought about forming a replica of the Emmy with tin foil, writing his name on it in Magic Marker, and mailing it off to him.  Yes, I’m a softie.

There’s nothing soft about The Good Wife. There’s no singing, unless you mean witnesses turning state’s evidence, and no dancing, unless you mean the legal tap-dancing of the lawyers.  There’s no open stage; instead there are windowed conference rooms, dark courtrooms and a claustrophobic apartment.

I had no intention of watching this series.  A lawyer (yawn) forced back to work by the arrest of her crooked politician husband (yawn).  Julianna Margulies and Chris Noth?  I was sure I’d spend half my time trying to decide who had the better eyebrows.

Then my wife started watching.  In between taps on my keyboard, I began watching out of the corner of my eye.  I became intrigued by the complexity of the story, especially when Peter was released from prison but forced to stay under house arrest, and I began asking my wife questions about the characters and their backgrounds.  I became enamored with Kalinda (Archie Panjabi), the mysterious (but hot!) law firm investigator in miniskirts who would probably run over her grandmother to get an illicit piece of information on any case the firm was handling.  Next thing you know, I was planted on the couch too.

I love the moral ambiguity lurking in nearly every scene, and I love how no good deed goes unpunished - for example, the recent episode where a helpful neighbor lies to protect Peter and is rewarded with the near-deportation of his mother and the jailing of his sister.  I also love how Alicia, to win the Junior Associate job, asks a favor of Peter’s unctuous political advisor (the deliciously smarmy Alan Cumming), a soul-selling that I’m sure is going to have nasty consequences.

So yes, I will be spending my Tuesday evenings with a singing and dancing Benetton ad and lawyers that I would never allow inside my front door, and I’m looking forward to it with delight.  OK, I’ll admit it, I’m not really watching them tonight. I’m Tivo-ing the episodes for Wednesday viewing, so I could answer the phone between 9 and 11 tonight. Still, don’t dare effing call me at that ungodly hour.  Have you no shame?