Sunday, July 4, 2010

#1: "I've always said I like you without your nose."

Any type of personal biography or description of my particular worldview would and should begin with my fully and eternally disgruntled attitude towards, well, everything around me.  I think that's a strong influence on why I look to the past for the culture (across all media) that I seek to absorb on a regular basis.  It isn't so much that the grass is greener on the other side, it's just that (for the most part) the grass has turned brown and died.  You'll find that many of these entries will end up being older than I.

So with that, my first 30-30 entry will be a TV show that I began religiously watching in high school on Nick at Nite, though I first noticed it when I was much younger watching it on lazy summers before I would go out and play little league.  In high school, which was--WOW!--approximately half my life ago, I don't know if I was as much of a curmudgeon as I am now and I would imagine there was more room for hope.  A lot actually.  And in it's own way, it was a television show that mirrorred the hope of an America in which it happened to be firmly entrenched.  A Kennedys at Camelot for network television.


But here it seems I've buried the lede.  The show is "The Dick Van Dyke Show", the story of Rob Petrie (Van Dyke), the head comedy writer of a television variety show, who lives in New Rochelle, NY with his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) and young son.  The other principle players are his co-writers, Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam) and Sally Rogers (Rose Marie).  The show was kind of revolutionary for sitcoms at the time, but that's essentially a different discussion.  And a terrific book by Vince Waldron on the show can explain that for you better than I ever could.  But as it turned out, it was pretty profound on me personally as well.

In retrospect, I think the show hit me at the precise moment it would have had the greatest effect on me.  If I had seriously watched it when I was younger or a little older, I don't know if it would have carried so much weight.  Particularly, it was the show's particular brand of idealism that had me wide-eyed.  Yet it was a completely realistic type of idealism.  Never once did I think that these people couldn't exist or that one day I couldn't live that life.

By then, if I couldn't fully articulate it, then in the back of my head definitely, I knew that I wanted to write.  I didn't know how or what (I'm not sure I still do), but I knew that I loved it and would be ecstatic if I could be paid for it.  At times it seemed hard for Rob, Buddy, and Sally, but it almost always appeared ridiculously fun.  If I knew something else at the time, it was that I wanted the perfect wife, family, and suburban home.  People who know me now realize that that isn't the case anymore, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a 15- or 16-year-old who looked ahead and probably saw that in his future.  Rob and Laura fought as much as any couple you might see on TV or even life, but how could you not want that relationship for yourself?  (And how could you not want Laura Petrie as your wife?)  From my perspective, if you can't have that relationship, then why have one at all?  There's no point in settling when something like that is possible.

Things don't turn out the way you expect--they rarely do--but on those late school nights when I should've been getting ready for bed, you ignore those less upbeat aspects of life and let the joy wash over you.  And a little song, dance, and humor certainly helps the medicine go down.





Laura "auditioning" for a PTA (?) fundraiser play, directed by Rob.




Rob mocking Laura after another talented parent nailed her own audition.



Laura in trouble for accidentally saying on national TV that Alan Brady, star of the sitcom Rob writes for, wears a hairpiece.

P.S. The entire series is available for streaming on Netflix.  What are you waiting for?

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