Pilot Episode

Among the changing of the leaves and the cooler days, one of my favorite things about fall is the return of prime time TV.  Yep, I'm a total TV junkie.  Should I be spending my evenings studying, writing proposals and grants, and keeping abreast of the current literature?  Sure, but then I would miss all those new shows!  Since the end of Lost, I've been hopelessly searching for a replacement.  I feel like a part of me died when that show aired, or maybe it just went to an alternate universe?  Still not sure what happened there.

Anyways, every year, there is a new crop of medical shows, cop shows, sometimes a firefighter show.  I'm left wondering where the laboratory research show is!  Don't people care where their science and medical advances come from?  Don't they have an interest in what I do all day?

I started to think about what my day does entail and how that might translate to prime time television:

Arrive at lab - check email
Check calendar and make note of meetings and seminars to attend today.
Check email.
Check my cells under the microscope.  Umm, split tomorrow.
Do some data analysis on excel and graphpad.
Write in my notebook.
Check email.
Lunch.
Attend seminar.
Snack.
Check email.
Spend some time thinking about future experiments.
Look up articles on Pubmed - read abstracts only, but save files.
Work on lastet writing endeavor (paper, proposal, grant application, etc.)
Decide to split cells after all.
Check email.
Go home.

So, it might not be the most riveting, action filled profession in the world.  Even when there are a lot of experiments going on, to the untrained eye, its not very interesting.  Add some clear colorless reagent here, add a different clear colorless reagent there.  There are no poofs, no clouds of smoke, no "Eureka!"s.

So, perhaps, a laboratory themed show might need to be more Scrubs-esque and be about the people, rather than the work. Hmm, we might have something there.  You can't deny that there are certainly some interesting characters in a laboratory setting.  And, given the popularity of The Big Bang Theory, you can't argue that geek doesn't sell.  Alright, time to ponder this one and get back to you.  For now, I need to go check my email.