TV habits shifting

Every year Dylan and I pick a few shows to watch together. One used to be American Idol but he says it's jumped the shark. He calls it "boring" and complains it's "always the same." I still like it, but I can see what he means.

I've been noticing that the way Dylan and I watch Idol and other shows has changed dramatically. Namely, my laptop is sometimes the TV and online video and blogs now round out the experience.

• I watch Idol but I sometimes just watch clips online.
  
• We just started watching Idol Critic online. The host, Liza Persky, is great and runs down all the stuff you said about Idol that week, plus some stuff you thought, but didn't say out loud. Oh, and she says it better and with clips.
  
• Another show we watch is 24, which has become quite absurd at this point so it's more like a comedy - it pretty much jumped the shark last year. But we have fun because we watch it at the same time we read live updates to Dave Barry's blog. WAY funnier that way.
  
• Since we usually watch 24, we catch up on Heroes (which airs at the same time as 24) by watching it when we have time on my laptop. If we watch Heroes on TV, then we catch up on 24 on my laptop.
  
• We watch a lot of Daily Show, Colbert Report and SNL clips online and often miss the shows on TV.

So I know I could be like Marty and go the DVR/TiVo route. But the low tech solution of just carrying my laptop into the living room is where I'm at now.

Here's Idol Critic: