The One With All the Reminiscing

Lately I’m finding myself reminiscing a whole lot about TV.

I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s the time of year, and the fact that, for decades, we all tuned in to see the season finales of our favorite shows every spring. So, force of habit.

Or maybe it’s a mix of that and the realization that I’ve been watching so much Netflix lately, I don’t have any highly-anticipated season finales I have to wait for.

For the record, I LOVE on demand TV and streaming services. I ADORE not having to wait 7 agonizing days for the answers to whatever questions established in previous episodes. Can you tell I grew up in a pre-internet, pre-Tivo age?

But the other thing that has really hit home for me isn’t just the way we watch TV now; it’s what we expect from TV.

With all the hype recently around the Friends reunion special, I caught myself remembering many moments of a show I certainly watched, and could appreciate what it meant to many people, while still not absolutely loving it myself. (Sorry, fans. Nobody throw things.)

And I saw a thread on Twitter about “which shows do you think were cancelled too soon?”, and that brought to mind a number of programs I hadn’t thought about in a while, but I definitely agreed with some of the sentiment expressed there. (In case anybody’s wondering, my top 3 in this category are Houdini and Doyle, Midnight, Texas, and Stitchers.)

The difference, I feel, between a show like Friends, which was a formulaic sitcom with characters many viewers related to and developed bonds with, and programs advertised in, say, May of 2021, is the intention. The writers, directors, and actors of Friends hoped to make a show that would engage audiences for half an hour a week, and be enjoyable enough that they’d come back next week and the week after that. It worked — mostly because the undeniable chemistry between the six leads was authentic, and immediately something viewers connected to — but also because, in a world that was growing increasingly complicated, such a show about, at its core, simply friendship was a beautiful escape.

Nowadays, every.single.thing has to have an agenda. Every.single.freaking.episode of whatever is about social justice, racial justice, gender inequality, political issues, headline news, and all the garbage that our world is constantly on fire with. Now, before anyone jumps all over me for that comment, let me make crystal clear: I believe it is important to address these things and hopefully make progress on them. I am quite aware that sometimes media and entertainment have helped pave the way for big changes in society and culture, and I support art and artists encouraging tolerance, growth, and peace. HOWEVER. I also believe we don’t NEED a soapbox literally shoved down our throats for valid points to get across.

I remember when dramas handled topics such as racial tensions, LGBT rights, domestic abuse, terminal illness, PTSD, and civil war refugees with dignity. I remember when the storylines focused on the bonds between the characters and how they grew as individuals, and the weekly plots were almost a backdrop.

These were the stories that stood out to me, that made me think, and feel, laugh, and cry.

There are pretty good reasons I don’t watch much new TV. And having real life plastered all over my fiction is one of the biggest.

But also, it’s because a lot of what’s presented in television striving to be realistic still isn’t…right.

At the risk of needing to shield myself from rotten tomatoes: again, let’s look at Friends. It wasn’t even filmed in New York City. None of them have accurate accents. In the early seasons, there was NO way they could afford apartments in Greenwich Village. These were also adults dating in the age of AIDS, and somehow not caring at all that they slept with apparently hundreds of people before finding — or finally keeping — their lifetime partner, and the serious risks they were exposing themselves to.

Now, I know I just said above that we don’t need our entertainment to be totally believable. But, if it doesn’t even show up on our radar, how much are we going to care about the characters, and keep tuning in?

How do we strike a good balance between totally unrelatable and too heavy?

I don’t know if I have an answer.

I just know that plenty of other programs figured that out in the past. And that means nowadays, I miss good TV.