Okay, I’ve calmed down- tirade over. I may be a college professor and a radio announcer, but I still love TV even if I hate quite a lot of what’s on TV right now. I guess what makes me go a bit ballistic about this is the fact that TV has the potential to be so much better than it is, and it often has been very fine indeed. I remember a Matt Roush column in TV Guide some years ago – in fact, I think it might have been his debut column with that magazine – in which he spelled out how much he loved television and why. One of his most compelling observations was that – at that point in time – if you looked at the list of best-selling books in America, you would see mostly fiction that was somewhat trashy and non-fiction that might be, to put it charitably, written with less than sterling care. But if you looked at the top-rated television programs, you saw things at the very top of the ratings such as ER and Frasier. Great quality usually succeeds on television, he said, and it shows us what a great medium it really is, no matter how fashionable it might be to criticize it. And I still remember the very last sentence in that article from 20 years ago: “I love television.”
Fast forward to 2007 and of course it’s a vastly different picture, and the top of the TV ratings read like a cultural train wreck. . . especially with the writer’s strike going on. . . . and for those of us who love television, it’s an artistic catastrophe. But at its best, TV still has a lot to offer, and Kathy and I are just lucky to be able to turn on the TV and have upwards of 200 channels from which to choose. . .as opposed to our first five years in Decorah when our choices were channel 10 in Rochester (NBC) or channel 12 in Cedar Rapids (CBS.) Period. End of story.
So what is there to watch? Plenty. I love PBS’ “American Experience” – which this past Monday explored the history of the lobotomy and which in two weeks will celebrate New York City’s Grand Central Station. You never know what they’re going to explore, but you can be sure that they’ll do a marvelous job with it. I love reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “Friends,” “Will and Grace,” and especially “Frasier” – and when I want to circle back in time, I take out DVDs of the Mary Tyler Moore Show or Bob Newheart Show and laugh as hard as I did the first time around. I love powerful dramas like “Brothers and Sisters” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” I love watching a good tennis match on television, or important figure skating events, or an amazing football match up like that hard fought battle between the Packers and Giants last Sunday night. I love how TV can bring us right down to the field not only for the experience of those players in the trenches as the battle is being waged, but also for moments like the one pictured above in which Brett Favre congratulates Eli Manning on his victory. (I just read that 50 million people watched that game, which puts it ahead of several Super Bowls.) But if it gets too close, I often have to leave the room – but fortunately, Kathy is made of sterner stuff and hangs in there while her fragile husband curls up in fetal position under the dining room table.
I should interject here t- although it probably goes without saying – that I tend to react powerfully to television in a way that brings to mind a charming TV movie from many years ago about two developmentally discable adults who fall in love- played by Richard Thomas and Julie Kavner. (Who played Rhoda’s younger sister and who voices Marge Simpson.) The first time we see Kavner’s character, she’s at home watching an episode of I Love Lucy or The Lucy Show, complete with the typical escapades, and her character is completely caught up in it, yelling at the screen “No, Lucy! That’s how you got in trouble before! No, Lucy, No! Ricky will be home any minute!” That’s me. When something intense is happening on the screen, be it some grotesque injury on ER or even a searing fight between two characters, I’ll often have to leap to my feet and run from the room clutching my head in pain. Or if something is funny, I laugh twice as hard as I did when I saw it the first time around, which might be twenty or thirty or even forty years ago.
And I should say as well that while Kathy and I are a bit at odds when it comes to some of these reality and game shows that she enjoys and I can’t stand – or cartoons like “Justice League” or “Teen Titans” which I love but which she thinks are a stupid waste of time . . . we end up being fairly compatible when it comes to television. It’s one more window to an amazing world. I still remember the first time we visited my Uncle Paul and his family up in Grand Rapids, MN. I was probably 8 years old or so. Mom and dad warned us ahead of time that they didn’t have television- and indeed they didn’t. Actually, they did have a TV but it was hidden behind a painting and it was taken out and watched only on very rare occasions. I remember feeling like I was on the planet Neptune; it was just so strange to think of a house without television. . . but I’m sure it’s a big reason why those Northern Bergs ended up being such creative people. Of course, we southern Bergs eventually caught up for the most part- and I like to think that the hours we spent in front of the TV watching Bugs Bunny cartoons and Tarzan reruns didn’t warp us or impair us too much. And who knows. Maybe it’s one reason why we managed to become fairly wholesome and successful citizens.
So television is demanding a lot of forgiveness from me, these days – but I love it all the same like a parent loves their errant child who keeps getting called in for detention but for whom you continue to have high hopes.