Tuning in to the Guilty Pleasures channel

From the first game show and the first rerun on, television has always been fruitful ground for guilty pleasures. Recent years have only added to the bounty. Hundreds of channels! Reality show mania! Lifetime TV movies! TV shows on DVD!

And with the advances in technology, we can now watch even the worst shows on crystal-clear high-def sets that are larger than many homes. Because really, if you're going to settle in for a nice long "CHiPs" marathon (not that there's anything wrong with that), you're going to want to see every pore on Erik Estrada's face.

"America’s Funniest Home Videos"

Craig Sjodin / © 2003 ABC, INC.

Watching people accidentally hurt themselves makes me laugh. Not severed-limb hurt. Just bruised from, say, a spontaneous half-gainer off a roof or a bike/sled/drunk vs. tree/shed/grandma incident. Is that a Slip N’ Slide? Trampoline? Piñata? Oh the humanity. And yet "America's Funniest Home Videos" has never realized its true potential: a rogue chimp popping some oblivious zoo ogler in the grapes. I’ve been waiting 15 years for that, suffering through Bob Sagat’s seven-year reign as America’s most hated host (Tom Bergeron, left, is now host) and countless studio audiences crowning "baby blowing a snot bubble" the show’s best clip. Guilty pleasure? Sure. How else do you come to terms with helping to perpetuate a system that disproportionately victimizes mulleted middle America by exploiting their dignity for the chance to get on the TeeVee and win $10,000? "America, America, this is you ..." indeed.    —Ashley Wells

‘Beverly Hills, 90210’

UPI file

By my best estimate, the amount of time I have spent watching "Beverly Hills, 90210" is 2 gazillion hours, or at least as much time as it would have taken me to read all of Proust. I don’t consider this time wasted, though. "90210" is more than just a television show for my generation — it’s a touchstone, a shorthand, a way of life.  We went from giddily catching up outside our own lockers (“Did you see Brenda tell Dylan she was late? And I don’t think she meant late for class.”) to gathering with drinks as adults and mocking the characters' career choices. (“Now Donna’s a fashion designer?”) My friends are all, like me, Valerie fans. I’ve never meshed well with Brenda or Kelly fans and I don’t think there are any Donna fans.  Thanks to Tivo and daily repeats on SoapNet, it may be the seventh or eighth time I’ve seen Dylan’s intervention, or Kelly’s time in the cult, or Brenda’s trip to Paris, but I know it won’t be the last.  Give me a megaburger at the Peach Pit over a madeleine any day.    —Hannah Meehan Spector

KRT file

‘CHiPs’
Every so often, my TiVo grabs an episode of "CHiPs," and I just have to sit back in wonder and amazement that the 1970s really happened. I know Erik Estrada's Ponch was supposed to be the eye candy, but he was a bit too toothy for me. I had a minor crush on Larry Wilcox's Jon, a Wyoming boy who played his part like the gentle cowboy he was. (Check his IMDB listing — sadly, he hasn't done much since, except for sad copycats like "The Little CHP" and "CHiPs '99.") When I was growing up in the Midwest, the show screamed California to me, from the palm-lined streets to the universal tans to the oh-so-tight uniform pants. It should have stuck to car chases and crashes, though, its few attempts at hipness were as embarrassing as finding your dad in a mosh pit. Once Ralph Malph from "Happy Days" played a Gene Simmons-like character in some weird attempt to lecture kids against rock and/or Satanism and/or ugly face makeup, I'm not sure which. And it was delightfully obvious that Ponch and Jon's bikes were being pulled on a wheeled trailer. I loved it anyway, up until they replaced Jon, but really, the shark was jumped long, long before that.    —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

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