A&E: Thanks for the Memories

Please excuse me if I SHOUT WHEN I TYPE tonight. One of my ears is plugged up and I can't hear myself expostulate. The doc says that till I'm better I have to lay off the antihistamine. I'm a little worried; not only is it the only thing that keeps me from coughing all the time, but I don't want anyone to start thinking I'm pro-histamine. Take it from me, kids: just say no.

I do have friends, although you wouldn't guess it from a joke like that. Life being what it is, however, let’s face it: most of us spend way more time watching TV than we do with our friends. So it shouldn’t be a complete shock that some of us, at least, form attachments to TV shows. Here are some of the shows I wish hadn’t moved away:

The first show I remember looking forward to was Adam-12. What I remember was rushing through my bath to get downstairs in time for the beginning. I don’t know if I understand the appeal, then or now (of the show, that is. I’ve gotten over the appeal of rushing through my bath). On the other hand, when you think about it, there isn’t a lot of space between Adam-12 – which is in itself a direct descendant of Dragnet, the first great TV cop show – and Law & Order. And I think there’s a decent chance that this Law & Order thing might well catch on.

In the ‘70s, the show I waited for was the Rockford Files. Of course, since it aired on Friday nights, it could’ve put a real dent in my social life. I was fortunate, however, not to have a social life, so I was free & clear to hang with Jim, Rocky and the gang. James Garner is just one of those guys you can watch doing anything. He’s able to be the “hero” while at the same time being just a little bit cowardly & self-absorbed.

I owe an enormous debt to the show Soap. Not because it was a classic, although I did enjoy it. When Soap debuted, there was an enormous amount of controversy over the subject matter. Several ABC affiliates chose not to carry it, or ran it in late night… among them our local station. In its place, our friends at WAST ran a half-hour syndicated show called Second City TV. They got better-known when they did the late-night series on NBC, but the original show was even funnier (and ironically, in a lot of ways more subversive than Soap). Rick Moranis was great in the network version, but the show lost something when Harold Ramis left from the original cast to be a successful director. And don’t even get me started with Robin Duke and Tony Rosato.

The best show ever in my opinion was Hill Street Blues. It’s kind of hard to remember at this point just how groundbreaking it was for its time. The handheld cameras, the overlapping dialogue, the mixture of comedy and drama…. I loved everything about it from day one. I even made sure to watch it when I was in college – in those days, there was a TV in the lounge on our floor; nobody had their own. I would round up my friend Rob and stake out the lounge a little before 10 every Thursday night. Going to school in Western NY, I had a few Thursday nights wrecked by pre-emptions by Buffalo Sabres hockey games (another measure of my always-tenuous social life).

It appears that my memories runneth over, so I guess I'll make this post a Very Special Two-Part Episode. Will Our Hero survive to watch TV in the 21st Century? Tune in again, same Bat-Blog....