Who says machines can’t feel? Our televisions are in revolt. Like many part-time residents, we have two. One in the city, one in the country. An embarrassment of riches.

This season, we made a strict “no TV” rule in the city. With my son in his all-important junior year in high school and my daughter engaged in the grueling process of applying to various selective public high schools in the city, it seemed like a good time to limit our media consumption.

We tend toward indulgence in my family. The old rules of “no TV until homework is done” or “one show a night on school nights” just didn’t work for us. And if one child finished with homework while the other struggled until midnight, the blue tube became an irresistible magnet.

My husband had become a Weather Channel devotee. It got so that he actually taught me how to read those swirling green clouds of precipitation with 80 percent accuracy. I liked it better when the weather was unpredictable.

Although I miss my Monday night “Antiques Roadshow” routine, I don’t miss most of our old mid-week TV habit—cop shows at ten o’clock, followed by news or “Friends” re-runs. No time for books in a busy week of housework, homework, dinner, TV.

So it was we came to the rule. There would be no TV in the city except in extreme circumstances or teacher-assigned shows about foreign lands or extinct animals.

This was not a bad way of solving the other problem of part-time city dwellers: how to get the kids to the country every weekend? TV!

Yes, it was to be limited and homework time must be factored in, but weekends in the country were okayed by the media monitors.

As most of our child-rearing dilemmas, this was my own fault, of course. I raised my son watching “Sesame Street” and “Mister Rogers” before his half-day Montessori school every day. His father watched “Superman” with him when he was only three years old, propelling his life-long desire to make superhero movies, or preferably, to be a superhero.

My daughter’s tastes ran more mainstream as she approached teenage. “Gilmore Girls” was our mother/daughter bonding show. (Why does she think Lorelei is cool, but I’m a geek?)

“Friends” has a cult-like following among her circle of friends and, admittedly, is one show we all watched together.

So how to forfeit all this familial joy? Make a rule and stick to it. No cheating at eleven o’clock just because the kids are asleep. No season premieres.

The rule was challenged in its third week by the democratically enlightened members of the household. It would stunt my daughter’s social progress to be out of the loop on certain TV-land developments. The drudgery of homework required a reward, they cried. Facing the prospect of a California-style recall, I relented.

It was then the revolt began. As we huddled together in our city apartment on the night of the “Friends” premiere, our trusty Magnavox began to flutter. Ross and Rachel looked like they were on pogo sticks. My son declared the TV was dying of neglect, and I found it hard to deny.

We wobbled through the hour-long show, which wasn’t as funny as we had hoped, and dutifully returned the set to silence, feeling a little like dieters after a hot-fudge sundae.

The mechanical failure was mere coincidence, I was sure.

Then the weekend came. As part of my son’s birthday celebration, I had looked forward to watching a movie as I stretched out on the La-Z-Boy. My plans were thwarted by a blank screen. Our self-rigged home theater, with its six speakers and a powerful sub-woofer was missing an essential element: the picture.

One is a coincidence, two is a revolution. Well, I can play this game.

Get me to the hot-tub!