I recently found myself craving some retro TV,
and I PVR’d (I’ve created a new verb) an old show I remember from my early
youth: The Rifleman, starring Chuck
Connors. Some of you are old enough to remember him playing the
tough-but-fair-single-father and vigilante, Lucas McCain, whose wife probably
died in a gun-related accident, and whose family later went on to found a
French fried potato empire in Canada. My friends and I used to call him
“Mucous” McCain, and my favorite part of the show was, hands down, the opening
credits. You knew right away that Mucous was one “bad ass mo-fo” because he
glared at the camera while he indiscriminately fired off his rifle walking down
the main street of town. The townsfolk in Mucous’s town must have run for cover
whenever he was around, because he seemed a little reckless with that rifle. I
can sum up the plot of every episode of The
Rifleman as follows: the bad guys rode into town, Lucas wrestled with his
inner demons and the seemingly irreconcilable conflict of his gunslinger and law-abiding
personalities. Inevitably, he ended up vastly outnumbered in a gunfight,
slaughtering all the villains with his Wild West version of an AK47. The whole
show was a send up to Mucous pureeing a bunch of bad guys with his lightning
fast, repeat action Winchester. The filler in the middle was absolutely ludicrous.
I began to think about some of the other TV shows I watched when I was younger.
Actress Florence Henderson just passed away last week, and she played the mom
in the hit sitcom The Brady Bunch. I
remember how clean cut everyone was in that show. It seemed as if TV reality was
more overtly manipulated back in the 60s and 70s. I found it somewhat ironic
that actress Maureen McCormick, who played eldest daughter Marcia on the show,
wrestled with substance abuse through much of her adult life. Another show
which highlighted the difference between television and reality was Dragnet. I liked Dragnet then and I LOVE it now. The monotone dialogue and the
deadpan acting is hilarious, and I can’t help thinking the producers knew the
show was silly. There was one episode in particular that stands out in my
memory. I think it was called “Blueboy” and it dealt with young people using
LSD. Of course the young man who took LSD suffered some tragic end. You could
argue that these shows were unrealistic depictions of life at the time, but I
wonder what they tell us about the era in which they were produced. Why deify vigilantism? Why was divorce sanitized?
These days, nothing is as clear. Yes, there are
wholesome sitcoms, but I’m also noticing a lot more fantasy and superheroes. And
then there is the explosion of reality television. Reality television is a game
changer; it is the car wreck from which I cannot turn away. Reality television
is anything but, and the irony is glaring. Not too long ago, I watched part of
a show about the struggles of some guy in a remote Arctic location. Here’s a guy in the middle of nowhere, and you know there’s a camera crew following him
around. At some point in the show, the guy’s snowmobile breaks down many miles
from his dwelling, and he has to walk home. Did the camera crew follow him home
in a heated snow cat, or did they just go for hot cocoa? A lot of this reality
crap focuses on the lowest common denominator of human behavior. We viewers
love the villains, and the more atrocious the behavior the better. Fifteen years
ago, I shrugged it off as an amusing dip in the quality of television entertainment,
but now that it has woven itself into the fabric of our culture, it has I think
become a troubling portent for the future.
If you doubt this, look at who just became President
of the United States. Last weekend, Saturday
Night Live was a repeat, and the original air date was shortly before the
recent presidential election. Clearly no one on the SNL writing staff thought
Trump had a cold chance in hell of winning the election, because the story about
Trump’s misogynist rant with Access
Hollywood host Billy Bush had just broken. To make the show even weirder, the
guest host was Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the hit musical Hamilton. Most recently he is newsworthy
for having admonished Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who had been in the Hamilton audience for one of the sold
out shows, shortly after the election. In a world where social media and cell
phones are the primary means of communication, a buffoon like Trump can prevail
over an entire political and media empire. Makes you think, doesn’t it? OK,
back to fantasy. Time to watch Andy Of Mayberry.
That Barney cracks me up. - Written by
Jamie Oppenheimer c2016 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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