I’m amazed by people who watch new things on TV every day. Someone who has a full day of exhausting work, navigates the maelstroms of daily interactions with other humans and then goes home and plops on a movie they’ve never seen or a show that you just want to try out. Wow.
My particular brand of mental exhaustion demands a period of attentive-inattentiveness in the evening. I work hard all day, reading, writing, editing, teaching, dealing with all the minutia in between and the last thing I need at home is new. I want old news. I want a show I have seen 81,293 times. I want a show whose jokes I know so well, I can skip them with precision if I want and still not miss the call back that comes 30 seconds after it. What this old show is depends on whim and mood. I go through phases. Brooklyn 99. 30 Rock. Friends. Cheers. Frasier. Do I feel like the 1990s? How about a little 1980s?
This isn’t to say that I sit and watch these shows. They are normally on in the background like light versions of light pop songs in the elevator. I usually read or do the little bits of work that couldn’t get attended to during the day. Burke usually goes along with whatever as she usually winds down her night working or playing on her phone and finding massively depressing news items to tell me about right before bed. That, or who Cher is dating or why we don’t like Susan Sarandon anymore. Or why Madonna wears gloves. I know it all. It gets through.
I understand that this habit makes me smack dab in the middle of the road normal. Everyone does it (except for those psychos who watch new stuff). And I have read about why people do this and I tick every single solitary box. Craving familiarity, fulfilling my emotional needs, the Mister Rogers effect, the Conjuring effect, and nostalgia therapy. All there for me. I’m not special.
When I’ve done enough work and can’t do no more, I recline, become a couch for my pets, and allow myself to slip into that little pot of nostalgia. It’s there that I dip back to a time in my life that was maybe less complicated than it is now. Or maybe a time when the world was less shitty – or at least on its surface – than it is now. A time when people were nicer. A time when people were optimistic. A time when I wasn’t daily disgusted by the words and actions of Donald Trump. Good times.
But when I go back to those times, it’s also where I can’t help notice some problems. This may be how virtually every plot of a 1990s sitcom episode would be rendered moot by the appearance of the cell phone. It might be how about 40% of the jokes would result in a demonstration of gobsmacked protestors outside of the studio within an hour. It might be the plot holes I couldn’t recognize then are pretty glaring now.
A good example of all of this is in The One with the Jam. In a depressed post-breakup state Monica Gellar first embarks upon a jam empire. She eventually decides to have a baby on her own using a sperm bank. Meanwhile, Phoebe is being stalked by her sister’s stalker. The language revolving this guy – crazy, nuts, etc – would be so out of place today. The gang would be filling Central Perk with the language of the specific. He has narcissist personality disorder or erotomania. He was parentified, neglected, or has obvious anxious attachment issues.
Then there’s the attacks Monica fields when deciding to have a kid on her own. They all say she’s nuts. Having a kid on your own? Crazy. Needless to say, this is a more or less common path for women these days and nobody thinks they’re nuts. Well, nobody whose opinions matter to sane people anyway. But then there’s the plot hole. Namely, how was Monica – a jobless 26-year-old who has a roommate – planning on raising a child on her own in New York City. The more you think about it, the more you realize that maybe crazy wasn’t the worst word to use in her case. You just wished her friends had explained it better.
And it’s this sort of thing that ruins trips down Nostalgia Lane. Fortunately, I’m just here for the background. I skip to the end – 22-ish minutes in – when everyone who needs to have a realization has one and they right their wrongs and everyone hugs. I don’t have time to reflect on how ridiculous that is because the next one is already starting. The One with the Metaphorical Tunnel when Ross is freaking out about his son playing with a Barbie doll instead of a GI-Joe.
Oof.
