I’ve always watched a lot of television.
By today’s ample streaming options, the three networks-plus-public television offerings I subsisted on as a kid might seem a bit 1970’s—limited in range, somewhat two-dimensional: Medical Center, Room 222, Get Smart, Julia, Brady Bunch, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, M*A*S*H, The Love Boat, Good Times, All in The Family, One Day at A Time. The Olympics. And Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares? My first gay uncle! And Zoom, that’s the original Zoom-- that 0 2 1 3 4 theme song still bangs around my brain.
Like most of my friends whose parents saw television as the post rock-and-roll phenom that would corrupt their children’s minds, I didn’t have an entirely unobstructed view: only one hour a day. But unlike anyone else I knew, my parents banned us from watching one show in particular- Let’s Make a Deal —too crass, they thought. Around this same time, my nutritionally awakened mother replaced our endlessly trade-able Twinkies and Ho Hos in the lunch box with trail mix, then introduced as “GORP.” As our intellectual guru, she also made us spend an hour each day pursuing a “growth and change” activity, meaning something enriching—that is, to the mind, not the body.
That’s because in my family, our bodies existed largely from the neck up: we were forbidden from jumping on the trampoline, for example, and my parents were happy to write a note to get us out of gym class or to dodge the likely humiliation of after-school sports. But if television then didn’t exactly rot my brain, it did reinforce so many now debunked mythologies about America and Americans, about humans and their humanity. But streaming choices today? They really do go deep and broad in showing us who we are, and aren’t.
And just who am I? I’ve been writing a lot of history lately and also producing podcasts, or what I like to think of as audio documentaries. I’ll be doing more of both, but I want my next written and multi-media projects to benefit from watching and listening to as much as I can. And talking with you about it.
Since the pandemic, like almost everyone else I know, including my parents, I’ve clocked a dozen marathons worth of streaming. Here’s a smattering: Star Trek: Picard, Watchmen, The Bureau, Borgen, Veep, Billions, Succession, Pen15, Work in Progress, Killing Eve, The Stranger, I May Destroy You, A French Village, Call My Agent, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Barefoot Contessa, This is Us, Line of Duty, Broadchurch, The Crown, and various documentaries on animals, nature, the royals, American family dynasties and presidencies. I just finished The Beatles: Get Back and The Girl from Oslo. Generally, I don’t go for sci-fi, but I’m very moved by Station Eleven.
So with Watchword, I’ve decided to transform hours of nightly streaming into a new version of our requisite ‘growth and change’: writing about television.
