What's on My TV: Wife Trauma-Dumping

From trauma-dumping drama (Walker) to trauma-dumping comedy (Monk) to trauma-dumping reality (Love Is Blind)—I'm starting to notice a pattern here.

Mar 17, 2024

What’s on My TV is, literally, what’s on my TV when I’m decompressing after work or during the weekends. Sometimes, I’ll talk about a film, but I’ll almost always talk about old series and new reality shows I choose to binge-watch.

My taste in TV series is all over the place, and sometimes I get embarrassed and stop watching when my husband is in the same room. Why? He wonders the same thing and always tells me I shouldn’t be ashamed to like what I like. So here I am, sharing my personal flavor of trash TV with the world.

Walker

It’s pretty obvious why I started watching Walker. While I didn’t watch the original Walker, Texas Ranger series, I’m a huge fan of Supernatural—but I haven’t finished it yet because I’m watching it with my husband. I’m still debating whether or not to watch the spin-off show, The Winchesters, but it being canceled so early can only mean it’s not good. Walker stars Jared Padalecki—and his wife Genevieve, who played Ruby in Supernatural, plays Walker’s dead wife. Mitch Pileggi plays Walker’s still-alive father. You might know him from The X-Files and Supernatural, too. I consider Walker to be as good as a Supernatural spin-off.

I’m in the middle of the third season right now. In the beginning, it was easy to binge-watch. But then Lindsey Morgan, who played Micki Ramirez, left. They spent so much time building up her character, only for it to come to nothing. I get that the actress left for personal reasons, and of course, that’s okay. But it doesn’t change the fact that I now have to get to know a whole new character and be okay with Micki’s boyfriend suddenly deciding that he wants to be a ranger and not a medical professional, despite being a medic.

What I find curious about Walker is that a considerable part of the main storyline deals with Walker’s trauma from his wife dying. Jared Padalecki must have known about this, yet his actual wife still plays his fictional dead one. I confess that the Supernatural episode where the Padaleckis play themselves crosses my mind whenever they act out a flashback or ghost scene in Walker. Maybe that’s why the trauma-dumping doesn’t work as well as it should.

Verdict: This is a must-watch if you’re a Jared Padalecki fan. If not, maybe save yourself from the family-based trauma-dumping and watch the original instead.

Monk

Speaking of trauma-dumping and dead wives, I started watching Monk three weeks ago because it’s now on Netflix. I remember catching episodes of this show while it was still airing, but I never really followed it. But I like a good mystery, and I like San Francisco, so a not-really-rewatch it is.

I’m in the middle of the seventh season. And like Walker, Monk got harder to watch after one of the lead actors left—Bitty Schram, who plays Sharona Fleming. You might know her as Evelyn Gardner in A League of Their Own. Her chemistry with Tony Shalhoub was amazing, like Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu’s in Elementary. Sharona’s presence in Adrian’s life is believable, while Natalie—played by Traylor Howard—feels like poor writing all around. I hear that Bitty will be back to wrap the series up, though. I’m looking forward to that!

Verdict: The mysteries are okay, even with the dead-wife trauma-dumping. But the way they write Adrian’s obsessive-compulsive tendencies doesn’t line up most of the time, and that bothers me. It’s good to put on the TV if you’re focusing on something else.

Love Is Blind

Yes, I watch Love Is Blind. I even joined a fantasy league for the fifth season. The current season is out now, and as of this writing, I have watched everything but the last episode! No spoilers.

I feel like everyone misunderstood Matthew—he’s probably a little neurodivergent. Who wouldn’t have a script to work from, with multiple dates every day? That would be the most efficient way to go about it, and I don’t know why AD was so pissed with Matthew. Also, Chelsea needs to go to therapy to get over her past relationship traumas. I don’t understand why no one says it. Her insecurity is out of control, and she’s being unfair to Jimmy. I would have loved more screen time for Kenneth and Brittany during the first few episodes—honestly, their story is the only one that doesn’t annoy me.

Verdict: I can’t really say, as I haven’t finished this season. But if this is your kind of trash TV, definitely go back and watch all the seasons! This might be the best thing to come out of the Simpson-Lachey marriage—after all, their marriage started Nick on this whole reality TV path.

Miao? Wow!

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