GenXers - this one’s for you - all 25 of you
Dear TV,
Of all the screens that command my attention, you are my greatest love.
It was always thus. As a child, even when we didn’t have you of our own, I coveted the neighbours’ television. I dropped in to visit you them every morning before school and again when the bus dropped us at home. Through those visits, I learned so much from you: the best way to assess the value of the Showcase Showdown; important cultural references like “de plane, boss, de plane,” “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha;” that I’m not suited to daisy-dukes; what it is to be a cruise director, and that I would always be more a Sabrina than a Kelly or a Jill.
TV, as I moved through my teen years, the anxiety of not having you in my home was huge. I missed meeting Tom Hanks for the first time in Bosom Buddies and understanding the complex dynamic between Joan Collins and successor wife, Linda Evans, on Dynasty. Finally, in 1981, I purchased you myself, $100 Magnasonic from Canadian Tire, black and white, 12 inches, and all mine, baby, all mine. I had achieved near-normalcy, as I no longer needed an imagination — you, dear TV, replaced books and radio, my previous windows to the world. I cozied up to you nightly from the vantage of my single bed, with my parents perched on the edge like the addicts they too fast became. As a trio, we were in on the mystery of who shot JR, laughed at Mrs. Bucket and Mr. Bean, and let Elwy Yost screen classic movies for us on Saturday nights (on those rare occasions I wasn’t out enjoying my new-found normalcy). After school, I learned important things from Video Hits, like how to Vogue and, that for men like Robert Palmer, women were as vacuous as department store mannikins.
I took you with me when I went to university where you babysat me during the long afternoon hours between classes, lulling me into believing that adulthood would involve the kind of twins Anne Heche played or scientists as glamorous as Ashley Abbot. Friday nights my friends and I gathered around you, just like our foremothers stayed warm around the fire, and howled with laughter as Bobby decided the entire prior season had been a dream.
As I entered graduate school, I adopted my parents’ fixation with The National and The Journal and followed the lives of Peter Mansbridge and Barbara Frum like they were celebrities. I marvelled that Mike Duffy would be the best man at the Mansbridge/Mesley wedding and lamented when the union fell apart.
Somewhere along the line, I upgraded you, first by painting your white Magnasonic-ness pink, and then later with an actual colour RCA model. As I approached my 40s, I moved from 12 inches to a secondhand 20 inch Sony Trinatron, already 20 years-old classic. Then upon meeting Jack, I cried in Best Buy, as he forced me to upgrade to 40 inches of wall-hung Samsung, allowing us to lie in bed, our love for each other cementing over our mutual love of you and Six Feet Under, arguably the best program you’ve ever broadcast.
Over time, my affection for you has been diluted - but only a little - by new attractions: first a return to CBC radio, then the Internet, then more recently, Twitter, Facebook, even poor lowly LinkedIn. These have erupted on a proliferation of screens in my house - phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops.
But whether as my portal to Netflix or the Food Network or, sometimes, even network TV (Cdn of course), I’ve still loved you best, TV. You kept Jack and me company through his long illness when we soothed ourselves with programs like the great Australian family dramedy, Offspring, and Downton Abbey, a show filled with the classicism Jack, more than anyone, loved to hate. You accompanied me in the months of heavy grief that followed Jack’s death when I had the attention span of a gnat but I could still binge-watch series, grief-related like Ricky Gervais’ brilliant After Life, frothy like Grace and Frankie, Canada’s best sitcoms, Schitt’s Creek and Workin’ Moms, and quality Scandinavian political dramas like Borgen. (there’s a new series of this just released, by the way. Excellent, just like the original.)
COVID hit me hard and for a time, I swore off all the news you broadcast but I kept you in my affections for providing me with a steady diet of crazy shit like Tiger King and Cheer, worlds I couldn’t have imagined (and don’t frankly wish to). Your Beat Bobby Flay Friday marathons have helped me distinguish quality gnocchi from the crap that Flay’s challengers produce; I have developed a new fascination with Padma Lakshmi as she puts her Top Chef contenders through the paces; and I’ve cringed with other FoodNetworkers watching the totally hokey Wall of Chefs where Canadian home chefs compete for $10. Or something like that.
So yes, TV, I still love you.
But oh, I kind of hate you now too.
Partly I attribute my shifting affection to Thursday night, when through your screen, I learned that so few people bothered to exercise their primary democratic right, we ended up with a second Progressive Conservative majority government. But that’s a temporary dissatisfaction outside of your control so it’s not just that.
No, since late April, my world has been turned upside down because for the first time in decades, you, dear TV, have been at the foot of my sofa, not my bed. As a bedtime TV-watcher, the two hours between the nightly dog-walk and bedtime have been my prime writing hours. I’ve vomited out blog drafts, fussed over punctuation in contest submissions, attended Zoom seminars, and read others’ memoirs for inspiration all while listening to Symphony Hall on Sirius XM and drinking herbal tea. My life was so laudable and so productive.
Now, during those hours I worship at your feet feeling like a zombie but ironically letting you suck my brain. Mere feet from the kitchen, your ads of snacks compel me to load up on needless junk. I hate you for preying on my addictions so wholly and shamelessly.
Damn you, TV.
