Feeling a Little Lost

I was reminded this week of something I wrote about a year ago, referring to the TV shows we make a habit of watching. Of the six I listed, ER ran its course last spring; Heroes, although valiantly protesting it wasn't dead yet, was apparently carted off a couple months ago; and we said a reluctant goodbye to our friends on a certain island (or maybe not) just days ago. So it appears that, on top of all the other landmarks I'm going to have to reprogram in a few weeks, I will also need to re-navigate the television dial (note to our younger friends: once upon a time, televisions had an actual dial! Leaving us with this charming anachronism).

As a longtime student of TV history -- not in an unattractive way, of course; as I have often pointed out, it's The Other Guy who gets obsessive... I'm an aficionado -- this has also caused me to reflect a bit on the nature of the series finale. As far as I'm aware, this kind of thing didn't happen in the early days of television. I Love Lucy was a beloved show, certainly, but I can't find any evidence that it had a finale in the modern sense. Same with Burns & Allen, Maverick, Perry Mason -- all popular programs I more or less pulled out of a hat and checked.

It's not like I'm going to really research it or anything ... but I believe the modern Finale Event dates to 1967 when The Fugitive concluded with a 2-part, cliffhanger finale. Part 2 was at that point in time the most-watched episode (by percentage of households watching) in television history... and it's still third among all series episodes behind the Cheers finale and "Who Shot J.R.?". Among other things, this points out the difference between the old-fashioned world of "You can watch anything you like, as long as it's on one of these 3 channels" world of true broadcasting, and today's environment where each viewer gets his own individual cable network.

Update: I just found these guys and they more or less agree with me on The Fugitive.

Of course, it's only an "important" show that merits a 'final episode'; others are just canceled. When I was a kid, the first big finale event I remember was The Mary Tyler Moore Show; I remember how highly anticipated it was, and of course it became the gold standard for final episodes. After that I tended to watch a series finale regardless of whether I ever watched the show much during its lifespan.... not really possible now with so many shows.

I guess part of what I'm getting at is that over the years, the concept evolved to where the final show was supposed to be a climactic event that summarized but also transcended the entire series; if you want to know how high the stakes have risen, recall the reception for the finales of Seinfeld and The Sopranos.

Into this environment comes the Last Lost -- a show that has specialized in raising its audience's expectations, an entire series based on an ever-growing pile of questions. I think you can probably take the expectation for Seinfeld and multiply it by the hopes for The Sopranos.

As it turned out, the show didn't exactly resolve every open question (of course, if they had really attempted to do so, the show would still be going on. Whenever you're reading this, still going on. Trust me on that one). It also didn't cure cancer, bring about world peace, or come close to satisfying every one of the people who have been blogging, and reading blogs, about it for the past several years. Yeah, I'm in that last group.

I'm also puzzled by all the speculation about what it really "meant"; was it not clear that everything on the island actually happened, and it was the "Sideways reality" that didn't really happen? Think about all the things that happened in the Sideways where we all said, "OK, wait a minute, that's really pushing the limits of plausible"... and it turns out that's because it didn't happen in the "real world".

And sure, I would've liked more "closure" -- although on the other hand, everyone dead is about as closed as you can get. While it was not everything I dreamed of, it did have some truly magical moments and afforded us a chance to say farewell to some beloved, and not all that beloved, characters, and watch them say goodbye to each other as well. I can't say that I felt like they owed me any specific outcome, so I'm not really "disappointed".

It's also worth pointing out that the Newhart final episode, which is widely considered to be one of the classics in the genre, was (at least in my opinion) interminable and boring, and is only remembered today for the brilliant final joke -- which may very well be the funniest moment in TV history; if not for that final sequence, I doubt the program would be remembered at all.

So what do you think the odds are that I can fill the the vacancies in my watching-list with even one new show that'll even have a series finale... much less one worth discussing?

Rolle with the Changes

All around us are some of the traditional features of spring: the lilacs are blooming, we've had the windows open, both my favorite (real) team and my fantasy baseball team are floating gently to the bottom of the standings (note: this last has only been "traditional" for the past couple of years). Another common May sight is the new college and grad school graduates sallying forth on the job search, armed only with their most-recently-written work of fiction -- their resumes.

We have a young friend just getting her Master's who's in the throes of the struggle as we speak. I suspect that she, like others of us, is pondering how close she has to get to her degree-field so that the degree won't feel like a total waste!

Not that I'm in any respect qualified to give career advice. I've been out of college for 27 years (give me a sec to recover from having typed, and realized, that) and in that span of time I've worked full-time for a total of less than four years. The most recent period of part-time work has been totally by my choice; but still, from a resume standpoint that's a little scary.

As a hopefully ex-jobseeker myself (I realized today that my job, which started in 1997, has been around longer than my home or my kids or my cars... or anything outside my marriage. This is a good thing because, as challenged as I am with change in general, nothing highlights my shortcomings quite like looking for work), I've taken a keen interest in the trials of others -- but my attention was piqued by the story of Myron Rolle.

Myron played football at Florida State University and was a star defensive back, and was thought to be a top pro prospect, likely a first-round choice in the NFL draft. Like many college football players, he actually graduated before his playing eligibility expired, and like many players he enrolled in graduate school.

The difference in this case was that instead of taking grad courses in physical education, Myron went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar... and he didn't do it to extend his football career but instead gave up his last year of football to do it.

Rolle perhaps doesn't fit neatly into the football player pigeonhole. It goes without saying that he's very bright -- his ultimate goal is to become a doctor -- and that doesn't necessarily work smoothly with football culture, where the credo tends to be "tackle now, ask questions after you blow out your ACL". And in addition to his academic pursuits, he's also had some philanthropic achievements through the Myron L. Rolle Foundation.

So when he returned from Oxford after his time abroad and submitted his name for the NFL draft, there was a lot of discussion. Some questioned whether taking a year off from football indicated he wasn't sufficiently committed to the sport, and there were also fairly audible whispers that maybe someone that intelligent was not all that safe a bet in a coach-driven, follow-the leader world (where it must be said, there's virtue in taking orders, acting as one, not thinking for yourself).

And so it went that on draft day -- although because of the growing interest in the draft, and consequent TV-ification, there are now THREE DAYS of draft day -- Myron was actually chosen on the third day. In the 6th round, the 207th player chosen. In a spot where (and I'm asserting this entirely without proof, but also without much fear of contradiction), there were chosen ahead of him some guys with "records" of a less academic nature, and other guys who wouldn't have gotten into college at all without football, but very likely few with charitable foundations. Zero Rhodes Scholars, that much is indisputable.

For a lot of reasons I'm predisposed to feel like the guy got the short end of the stick; I flatter myself that I know what it's like to be looked down upon because of intelligence (although truthfully I suspect that my classmates might have seen me as odd for, ah, multiple reasons). And he clearly is a sort of Renaissance man (in a literal sense you don't see too often). I wonder, though, whether it isn't actually a wise move not to choose him higher. A high NFL draft choice is an investment of money, sure; but just as much it's an allocation of resources that can lead to disaster if it doesn't pay off in a long-term asset.

And of course, what you have here is the living embodiment of the cliche, "He can do anything in the world he wants to do." I can see why you might not want to bet the farm on someone who might decide in 2 years to quit and go to med school, or do charity work in the Third World, or... who knows? In fact, you could make the argument that the greatest good for the greatest number would be achieved if all the teams passed on him and let him get to work making contributions to more than just the Cover-Two defense.

The Now and the Not Yet

I am on record in this space that I have long since decided that I'm not doing the Funny Kid Blog here. Sure, it would be easy enough to do when surrounded by kids (OK, not exactly surrounded by 2 of them... and anyone with more than two would certainly scoff at me... but a lot of the time it feels like it). I could tell the tale of my daughter -- who's been talking since she was about 4 hours old, and who carries around a pad and pen for amusement -- taking an hour to write 3 sentences for a school assignment. Or here's a son story: we've been inflicting Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons on the kids lately as part of the ongoing quest to instill Old-Fashioned Values. In one such episode, John-Boy had a crush on a girl and sneaked in for a kiss... whereupon Our-Boy remarked in a low tone, "Well, that was a good one."

And so it goes. I don't know that there's a big market appeal for that kind of blog, and in some ways it's way too obvious anyway. In the same way, since we got the news to which I alluded in my previous post, it would be easy to write the "We're Moving" blog; after all, we think of little else. We've got piles of boxes around (with the result that the van is now permanently out in the driveway to make room) and it's certainly a recurring topic of conversation. Of course, everyone in the church kind of wants to work through it with their pastor, so by the time I get to her she's often kind of "moved out"... so sometimes I'm left to stew in it. And so I do.

Consider the children of Israel, when Moses led them out of their Egyptian captivity (all right, stay with me here a bit)... they got out into the desert, and before long they realized they weren't really getting anywhere. Even though they were told they were going to the (original!) Promised Land -- which by definition ought to be pretty cool -- they weren't there yet, and all they could think about was what they used to have.

In case it's not immediately obvious, what they used to have was slavery. Beatings if they didn't work fast enough. The Old Testament even points out that they were making bricks for the pyramids, and the overseers not only raised the brick quota but also made them find their own raw materials. Think of it as No Brick Left Behind.

Still, I'm keenly aware that if you stretch a simile even a little too far, it can snap back and put your eye out... so let me be clear that I'm not escaping from slavery here (nor is it entirely clear that the Promised Land is the destination). But that's also kind of the point: if it can be a challenge to get from torture to paradise, I can perhaps be forgiven for being a little hung up on the in-between when I'm starting from a very comfortable spot.

It may also be quite clear already that I most certainly don't seek out new frontiers just for the sheer exhilaration anyway. I probably established that for good and all about 30 years ago, when I worked at the same place for 6 consecutive summers. Or perhaps when I spent 11 years in my first career despite having a full-time position for exactly one out of the 11. Could it have been when I bought my fourth Toyota?

For all that, however, what we do know is that it's coming up (and closer every day) no matter what we do about it. I wrote about this very sensation four years ago when I compared myself to Wile E. Coyote. My timeline was off by just a bit, but my conclusion was basically sound. So here's what we're doing:

(1) Last Sunday, we went to visit the new church -- just to say hello and let them start to think of us as something besides an announcement in the bulletin. We met a lot of people (though it is to be hoped that they don't expect us to remember all the names!) and everyone was very welcoming. That was in some ways a very important step in transitioning to a new reality.

(2) Then we took the kids to tour their future home. They got to see where their bedrooms would probably be, and check out the back yard, and generally begin to put a face on this thing we've been telling them is coming.

(3) Then I went around the place like a complete maniac with a tape measure in my hand, and for the last week have been translating the measurements into floor plans, complete with tiny scale-model paper furniture. There's so much about this that seems to undetermined & undeterminable that it seems to both of us like having a real concrete sense (pun not intended) of our new home will begin to smooth the way.

The tricky part, of course, is that we're not dead yet...

We've still got about 7 weeks to go; we can't just pack all the boxes today and wait for this part to be over, we still have life to live and ministry to do and a lot of people here we're connected to -- while at the same time recognizing that an important part of that connection is going to be amputated before too much longer. We are definitely trapped with one foot in the now and one foot in the not yet.

I've talked before about the fact that time-traveling to the past can be surprisingly painful... nevertheless, it may still be easier than traveling to the future and back, no matter how much it costs these days to fuel up your DeLorean.