TV Programs I Recommend Watching In Marathon Form:
Degrassi: The Next Generation
100 Greatest Albums of Rock & Roll
America’s Next Top Model
TV Program I Recommend Not Watching In Marathon Form:
The War *
* You might think that it is a good idea. You might think, like I did, “Wow, it’s Sunday! I have nothing to do! And I have no cable! And I have been meaning to watch this, because I liked Baseball when I watched it with my dad in 1994 when he obsessively taped it all to VHS! And I enjoy well-done historical documentaries that do not glorify violence and do not make me feel like a shitty American for not also glorifying violence! I am going to sit down and watch this program for three hours, and then I will go to the farmer’s market for some food, and then I will come back and watch five more hours of it! I will learn so much and I will gain a renewed and greater appreciation for the men and women who sacrificed their lives, youth and sanity for this country! It will be great!”
And it will be great, while it lasts. You will rejoice each time one episode ends and the next begins. You will sit, enthralled, curled up on your tiny couch in your tiny apartment, neglecting food and water and personal hygiene for the sake of well-paced historical enlightenment. You will swoon each time you hear Tom Hanks’ voice narrating the wartime reportings of the Luverne, Minnesota hometown newspaper. You will find it more than a little troublesome that you are so enamored with Tom Hanks’ voice. You will cringe at this and also other things that you see on screen. You will feel sick at your stomach. You will wonder how you did not know that German U-Boats trolled off the Gulf Coast and the eastern seaboard. You will think about your fourth grade teacher who made your class read books about the Japanese internment camps in the American desert and how sometimes other kids wouldn’t believe you when you told them about it. You will wonder how you never knew anything about what happened in the Philippines. You will feel bad about this because your grandfather and his brother both fought there. You will feel bad about everything in general.
You will rage at Antiques Roadshow when its cheery theme song and footage of shocked and awed collectors rolls on screen at 8:00 PM, buy you will feel relieved. You will watch Antiques Roadshow in hopes of it easing the transition back into the present, where things do not seem so bad, where people get giddy over their childhood toys and grandmothers’ china being worth enough to pay off your student loans, not where they go around getting limbs blown off and blowing the limbs off others and devastating families and towns and countries and having their own devastated in return.
You will then watch Regency House Party because it’s funny and light and ridiculous and British and also because it’s on PBS and you have been watching PBS all day and you suddenly do not know how to function without PBS being on, all the time, right now, that weird little profile PBS face (which has never once changed from the time you were young enough to watch Sesame Street unironically) smiling away.
You will consider the fact that you have watched more PBS in one day than many people will deign to watch in their entire lives. You decide to give them money next time they ask for it.
You attempt to go to sleep, because suddenly it is late. You watch one more episode of Regency House Party. It’s the last episode of the series. You feel very sad. And very sleepy. You are about to finally turn off the television, twelve and one-half hours after you turned it on, when you flip channels and find that the other PBS station (because Atlanta has two; you have never known why) is showing another episode of The War, one you have somehow not seen yet. It is the saddest one yet, about the 100th/442nd and the Battle of Hurtgen Forest and the last living Crow Indian war chief. It makes you laugh and cry.
You are tired.
You turn off the television, finally, before another episode can start. You sleep, finally. You wake up. You feel surprisingly alright. All that Regency House Party must have done some good. You don’t feel like anything is wrong until you are at work and you cannot take anyone’s problems or questions seriously because they do not involve World War II. And then you know something is wrong when there is a fire drill and, despite the fact that you were given fair and ample warning, it terrifies you and sends you squealing, running outside, bracing yourself for impact.
You tell your mom about this when you call her later in the day. She says, maybe you shouldn’t watch any more War for a while. You feel sheepish and stupid but you agree. You decide to always make plans for Sunday afternoons for now on. You decide to maybe watch less television in general. Maybe. Except Regency House Party, if they replay it. But no more of The War. Not right now.
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This was awesome.