The title refers to a concept from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, alluding to the fact that reality is in a constant state of flux. When you revisit the river, the water temp won't be exactly the same, there will be new critters, plants will have died/ others grown, etc. The water molecules themselves will not be the same ones as before. More significantly for the context of this post, you will have changed, especially if a chunk of time has passed; your memories, thoughts, ideas, expectations, dreams, etc., will not identically match the ones you had the last time you stepped in the river. Even if the river is close to being what it was, you will experience it differently. I find this to be true in particular for old TV shows I begin to rewatch.
One of my top favorite shows as a teenager was I Dream of Jeannie. Barbara Eden starred in this show, and she is still around in her 90s! I bought the complete series in a box set and couldn't even make it halfway through all the episodes. My god, this show was dumb. The dialog was occasionally amusing, especially when there was an excellent guest star, such as Paul Lynde, but ugh the repetitive plots and resolutions, usually in the form of Dr. Bellows (Hayden Rourke) complaining that Major Nelson (Larry Hagman) "did it to him again" when Jeannie magically blinks away whatever problem she had created. Jeannie nonstop harps on the idea of wanting to marry Nelson, but why? She can already manipulate him to do almost everything she wants, so it makes no sense that this supernatural creature needs the silly human bonds of matrimony to feel fulfilled. (The male writers naturally couldn't conceive of any world where every woman didn't want a ring on her finger.) Maybe we were supposed to assume that because Nelson was so virtuous he wouldn't have sex with Jeannie outside of marriage, and she was very attracted to him and wanted to sleep with him. This could not be explicitly stated of course because TV had to be "wholesome" back then.
Another favorite that didn't stand up to a rewatch was That Girl. It's supposed to be about independent Ann Marie (Marlo Thomas), who moves to the big city to stand on her own two feet, except she never does. She immediately acquires a lawyer boyfriend Don Hollinger (Ted Bessell) who is always around to help her out of a jam, and she also relies on her daddy Lou Marie (Lew Parker) at every twist and turn. Yes, Marie is actually the family's surname for some unfathomable reason. It's really sickening to watch Ann giggle and act like a little girl throughout these episodes. The best ep (not that I was able to stomach too many of them before giving up) was one that guest-starred Rich Little as her date (when she was mad at Don). Another weird thing is how "whitewashed" NYC was: not only were the streets abnormally clean, but everyone on the show was literally white.
The same goes for One Day at a Time, which wasn't nearly as cute as I remembered it, and instead it was mostly annoying. The main character, newly divorced Ann Romano (Bonnie Franklin), drove me nuts with her mannerisms, especially when she would put her hand on her forehead and say "Ahhhhhhhhh, [character's name who was upsetting her, usually a daughter's]." Dwayne Snyder (Pat Harrington), the building manager/ handyman was not funny, and in fact on a rewatch struck me as rather creepy. Why did he constantly barge into their apartment? Valerie Bertinelli was adorable, of course, and I still can enjoy some of the romcoms she starred in afterwards. I haven't watched any of her newer sitcoms ~ newer meaning anything after 1980. I know there's a redo of ODAAT with a contemporary family, but I have no interest in checking it out.
When I was in high school, I would flip on Match Game every afternoon. I thought Gene Rayburn and the guests were the funniest people ever. (I found out later that there was a lot of drinking going on, which makes sense as these folks were very uninhibited and always laughing.) Anyway, I saw it was being re-streamed on one of my channels, so I began watching. Yuck! The entire thing was beyond cringe. I guess my tastes have changed in the last 50 years? One would hope so. I discovered the other day via a friend that there's a new Match Game with Martin Short hosting. I watched it last night and was unimpressed. Short is funny enough, but the guests were not funny, and the questions were stupid, precluding obvious or even clever answers most of the time. Hulu conked out on me before the end, and I am not motivated to finish up the episode or watch any other ones. Oh well.
Shows that have stood the test of time:
1. Columbo
That's all for now. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
Maybe it was all-white to sell in the South?
ReplyDeleteI watch a lot of old TV, but a very particular niche: science fiction. I watch a bit of comedy, but mostly not this old. I think 50s American TV was more sanitised than UK TV, which was more independent of advertisers (particularly the BBC, but even on commercial channels, advertisers had little or no control over programmes the way they did in the US).
I watched the original The Twilight Zone a while back. Some of it was still very good, but some episodes were not, particularly the comedy episodes. I think what is normal/permissible in comedy has changed a lot over the years.
Current Paula lines up with teen Keera. I never watched those shows. Would catch an episode here and there but never saw the attraction. Some things, like ODAAT, were baffingly popular to me. IDOJ was fun because magic, but I think had more appeal to a kid than to a wiser teen. Most shows from the 70s have not withstood the test of time, with some lovely exceptions, like Columbo. Another fave of mine from back then, "Quincy M.E.", is horribly dated. Which makes me so sad. I would love to watch it and enjoy it again.
ReplyDeleteMost of the shows I loved as a kid have not aged well. One of the vanishingly few that I can still enjoy is the old Dick Van Dyke show. I still like lots of old movies, though.
ReplyDeleteI think I watched all those shows and didn't seem to apply any standards to them. Looking back, though . . . different story. In my case, I enjoyed the "family" shows, like Little House, or Leave it to Beaver, My Three sons, and so on--as dumb as they were, they were somehow comforting to me. I confess that as a new father with no father figure in my life to guide me, more than once, as I raised my son, did I say to myself, What Would Ward Do? (Don't judge me.) And of course like everyone else, I really liked the seven or eight actually good stories on Twilight Zone, and I was a Star Trek regular.
ReplyDeleteLots of cringe back then. Recently we started re-binging NCIS, and OMG. Still kind of entertaining though. And, as always, I want to point out the many times in Leave it to Beaver that June sat at Ward's desk and read the newspaper when he wasn't looking. I like to think that Barbara Billingsley insisted that the writers let her do that.