I Miss When HBO Was Weird

You know how time is weird when you try to match up the actual year something happened with how old you THINK you were (you could even say that time is a flat circle…)? For some reason, I swear I was ten-years-old watching Autopsy on HBO with Da Gawd forensic pathologist, Michael Baden. It was my favorite show, as perverse as that was, as I sat on the edge of the couch watching Baden lead me through the most twisted and fucked up scenarios of psychopaths committing horrible acts of violence against each other and almost getting away with it. But the show didn’t begin airing till 1994, which meant that I was at least a teenager when I was sneaking downstairs to watch them on late Saturday nights. Which I guess makes sense, because the come-up for my parents sure as hell didn’t happen till after my pre-adolescents and ma and pa Evans were not about to give over ya boy’s lunch money for some HBO. Still, HBO’s America Undercover documentary series was my shit and it probably felt a lot creepier as I happened to be way too young to be watching it.

There are numerous eras in TV that are worth noting, but the golden age happened primarily because of HBO — namely The Sopranos broke all the rules and helped shaped the difficult white protagonist theme in TV shows for the next fifteen years. HBO may not have the ’27 Yankees line up it once did, but its still pound for pound one of the best fighters in the TV game. Basically because it prints money and obtains what it wants. Game of T…