Intrusive Thoughts
Classic TV may or may not tell you things about the world in which it's created, but can you tell anymore?
While syndication is mostly dead, killed by the infomercial, it is still possible to find shows of long ago on streaming. I don’t necessarily force them on my kids the way my mom forced them on me when I was a kid, but if they want to spend time with me, they’ll often do so while watching Gidget or Columbo or Emergency! I’m not sure what they’re getting from it, but I know that I’m getting different things from it than I did when I was their age, in no small part because I’m aware of different things than I was when I was their age.
Now, part of it is that I spend a lot more time looking in the background than I used to. When I watch Jim Rockford drive around LA, I’m admiring the classic signage including of businesses that I’m not sure exist anymore. Jim’s still talking into the clown’s mouth to order his tacos from Jack in the Box. (That business does still exist, but you get the point.) It’s not just that I was closer in time then and less impressed by Manny, Moe, and Jack. It’s also that I simply didn’t look.
But more than that, I’m watching the changes in how people act. What’s expected of them. Watching Sally Field wear Moondoggie’s ring in an era of hang-out dates is a little strange. Lucy being constantly put down by her husband. All the men on all the shows who don’t actually like their wives. The fact that the Bradys could afford six kids and a maid on a single income. Things that are revolutionary on those shows that are perfectly normal today.
I wonder how people thought of them at the time. Oh, I could talk to my mother, but she’s less than helpful about that sort of thing. I might ask some of my older friends. How did they think about the gay semi-regular on Barney Miller? What did they think about the Bradys’ blended family? How did they react to Archie Bunker? These shows are, for better are worse, one of the records of our time, and I’d love to know how they felt to people who were living through them.
I suppose I could, therefore, record my own thoughts about Family Ties or Cheers or Family Matters. How I thought about the days when Jim Carrey was the token white dude on In Living Color. Perhaps that’s something we can write about here going forward. For now, I am stuck wondering if the people who wrote episodes of Gidget were writing authentic teenage surfing slang of the era. And who’s left who knows and remembers what they said before watching the show.
About the writer
Gillian Nelson
Gillian Nelson is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a child up for adoption. She fills her days by chasing around her kids, watching a lot of movies, and reading. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the '60s and '70s. She has a Patreon account.
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