What is the allure of a wide-screen, flat screen TV?

We don’t have one (Yet. I have a male in the house, so I imagine we’ll have one sooner or later.) However, every house I walk into that has one, the first thing I notice is that the actors and objects on the screen look all shortened and widened….like in a house of mirrors. Grampa B got one for Christmas, and they set up up for him. For a minute, everything looked normal, except that it had the black spaces at the bottom and top of the pic, then they flipped it to “full screen,” and everything and everyone got short, chunky and wide. It’s all distorted, and I don’t understand why anyone would prefer to watch TV that way.
Clue me in?