A quick background. Linda, whom I met in 1964 and married in 1967, experienced a major brain aneurysm in 1999 --12 years ago this week. Experts told us immediately she probably would die. They don't know this remarkable woman. When she didn't fulfill their initial prediction, they pronounced with certainty that her life had virtually ended. She would be in a hospital bed and a wheelchair and be dependent for the rest of her life. Wrong again, doc.

So many wasted predictions about a person who is stronger and more determined than anyone I've ever known. I didn't need the experts' opinions about these not-to-happen calamities.

I just wish I would have been warned about how her television tastes would change...

Oh, how they changed -- in a way that could have derailed a person who has been a student of television longer than I've known Linda. Another important note, though: It's been a happy, but wholly unpredictable, adjustment. As Linda has continually progressed from a huge setback, I have had to readjust my horizontal and vertical holds, so to speak, when it comes to video.

This surely was the last adjustment I expected after finally bringing Linda home, seven weeks after the event. The first clues came when we turned on the set one morning and the channel we had last watched was showing a Three Stooges short.

Larry, Curly and Moe had carried record amounts of opprobrium in Linda's life previously; she would look at me questioningly (perhaps weighing the chances of an annulment) when I laughed at their routines, and if our son was discovered watching them, the power of absolute parental censorship was invoked. But that morning, as Moe hit Curly's head with a hammer and stuck his fingers in Larry's eyes, Linda laughed.

Clue No. 2 came during a Seinfeld scene in which Kramer burst into Jerry's apartment, his hair smoking. Another big laugh. I was not prepared for this.

Linda's sense of humor always had been lively, but was more refined than mine. A James Brooks or Nora Ephron movie was more to her taste than, say, Dumb and Dumber. Taxi and M*A*S*H worked for her; Green Acres didn't. She did the Sunday Times crossword with a ballpoint; Mad definitely was not her magazine.

Amazed as I was by the change, I thought it could be nice to have a partner who suddenly enjoyed the "nuances" of slapstick. I didn't yet know how massive the change had been, though.

I got an idea when she started to develop an Emeril addiction. The Food Network had been added to our cable lineup during Linda's hospitalization. She loved cooking, was great at it and could spend a long time reading monthly copies of Gourmet and Bon Appetit. She's not a snob by any means, but Lagasse's shtick, I'm guessing, would have ranked him, in the old days, alongside Curly and Moe.

Reruns of Emeril Live finally left the air a few weeks ago. Because I have a rule that the person who can't get up independently and leave the room chooses what show to watch, Emeril has been on a lot in our home over the last decade. If David Bianculli hadn't invited me in 2009 to revisit television writing, I'm not sure what I might have done to find alternative recreation. Since caregiving keeps one close to home, I'm guessing he didn't save me from a life of crime.

Every brain event leaves different results. Linda's aren't heartbreaking or massive. But they still strike me as odd in the person I met 47 years ago.

Her love of Live with Regis and Kelly is every bit as powerful as it is for Mr. Lagasse. Anything Ellen Degeneres does is great with Linda. I bet she has watched more Paula Deen and Giada De Laurentis episodes than their closest relatives have. And the biggest thing I ever have learned from the former "Learning Channel," TLC, is that the wife of mine who hated shopping (but still looked fabulous every day when she went to work) can watch What Not to Wear and Say Yes to the Dress for more hours in a week than she spent over her entire life, collectively, in department stores.

Conversely, this woman, who sat engrossed as we watched heavy drama in the old days, has a hard time with it now. So while the other writers on this site regularly praise shows about zombies and meth dealers, I recuse myself from those deliberations, citing insufficient exposure to the product.

Good points to note: Linda enjoys as much as I do screening the programs I write about. And her feedback often helps me in forming an opinion.

But the best thing about this (and you're allowed to dismiss this as too Lifetime Movie-like for a serious website like this one) is I don't regret forfeiting heavy dramas that cause viewers to lose sleep (as a reader commented to David recently about Breaking Bad). And I have built up a snake-venom immunity to Ellen, Kelly, and Emeril, so no harm is done there.

The most important person ever in my life didn't check out, as predicted, 12 years ago. And she didn't remain where a calamitous health event dropped her. So if listening to Emeril yell endless "Bams," or watching Regis complain about his gripe du jour, or watching Ellen dance as badly as I do -- if that's the trade I made to have selfishly kept Linda these past dozen years -- that's OK with me.

Just so she never develops a taste for Minute to Win It.