It took a 50-year-old TV series to suck me back into the idiot box.
It was New Year’s Day and I had no intention of watching television. But tell me, please. If you happen to walk past the TV and “The Twilight Zone” marathon is on, could you resist the urge to tune in, if only to find out how that motley gang of wee people are going to get themselves out of the giant canister?
And then there was a bespectacled Burgess Meredith stumbling through the afterworld in search of books, a man with a crazy beard who had trapped the devil, and then a hungover couple who found themselves in a quaint little town with nobody in it. It’s crazy, right?
But other than that, I’ve been off TV. For a year or more, I haven’t even bothered to turn the damn thing on. It sits on a bureau to my right, an older model that weighs a hundred pounds and which visitors laugh at. The thing pretty much starts with a hand crank and some jumper cables, but it gets roughly 800 channels of crap, if crap is what you’re into.
I’m not into it. Not anymore. It isn’t the paucity of quality programming, it’s the programming itself: Every time I watch something on TV, I get the feeling that somebody somewhere is trying to drill messages into my head, to turn me into an obedient drone who doesn’t pay attention to anything that happens outside the TV world. They want me to fall into an entertainment trance, bug-eyed and slack-jawed, while they sink their programming into my gray matter.
The lives of whiny, self-absorbed strangers living together in a giant house is somehow deemed important. You ain’t nobody if you ain’t got a neck chain and some beads. There are important lessons to be learned in watching complete strangers argue. Teen acne is a scourge that threatens mankind. The economy is great! Just look at all the couples out there buying beach-front property on exotic islands.
Everything you hear on the evening news is true. What, do you think these pretty anchor people are going to say just anything their corporate owners tell them to? Whatever ails you can be fixed by a pill with potentially deadly and hilarious side effects. Government spies are wonderful people who only have your best interest in mind. Same with political leaders. Same with judges and prosecutors and guys with feathered hair who, for just three easy payments of $69.99, will tell you how to get filthy rich without even putting on pants and shoes.
TV programming is propaganda at best, a means of mass hypnotism at worst. To prove this idea, I went scrolling through the channel listings, wincing as I did so, to see what was being offered.
* “The Best Vacuum Ever!” As it turns out, this vacuum sucks. See what I did there? This is the kind of high-brow wit you can expect over the next 10 or 12 column inches of copy.
* “Hardcore Pawn:” I lit some candles, put on some soft music and prepared to watch. Wasn’t what I expected. The same thing happened in 2008 when I settled in to watch Pawn Stars.
* “Not Without My Hamster!” OK, this isn’t a real Lifetime Channel offering, but would anybody be very surprised if it were?
* “Duggars:” You can learn a lot from people who breed like flies.
* “Flipping Vegas:” A bunch of wealthy, skilled people upgrading homes that I’ll never be able to afford and then selling them to self-absorbed couples who swoon over things like bathroom fixtures and grout.
* “Kick Ass Workout:” I tuned in just long enough to determine that this workout, sadly, didn’t actually involve the repeated striking of buttocks with a shod foot, which would have been fun to watch.
* “The Golden Girls:” I’ve never watched this show. Ever. I especially didn’t watch it for six straight hours that one time when I was nursing a hangover. Not that you can prove, anyway.
* “Ghost Hunters:” Every floating dust particle is actually a ghost orb and perfectly ordinary folks will look like floating spirits if shown in the spooky green glow of night vision.
* “Top 100 Sexiest Videos:” If a visitor from a faraway galaxy came to Earth and tuned in to this, he’d either laugh so hard that he’d sprain an antenna or he’d contract a social disease just from watching and be banned from his home planet. After that, he’d probably get a bead for one of his nine belly buttons. Space is funky, yo.
* “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Simmern:” Some guy cooking the liver of the Ukrainian tiger mouse and sprinkling it with fire ants and flaked bumblebee and then convincing people to eat it.
* “Epic Homes:” Homes that are epic.
* Epic Houseboats: Houseboats that are epic. You should take out a loan and buy one.
* “Madam Secretary:” A series about a powerful blond woman in a pantsuit who serves as Secretary of State. I may strike this one from the list because I haven’t determined whether it’s a show or a political ad for Hillary Rodham Clinton.
* “How It’s Made:” Today’s episode featured the making of hot dogs, abrasive grains and sandpaper. Turns out, the hot dogs are made with abrasive grains and sandpaper, so that was informative.
* “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo:” I’m told this one has been canceled due to some ugly scandal. I’m shocked. Shocked!
* “Judge Faith:” Like Jerry Springer with a robe and gavel.
I think my point was proven and I could smugly announce that I had broken away from the leash that is television programming. But then I stumbled across a channel showing “Nazis: Evolution of Evil” and I got caught up in that for five hours. After that, I discovered “Saving Private Ryan” and, what? I’m just supposed to walk away from one of the finest war films ever made?
Like that, eight hours of my life was sucked into the boob tube, and while the programming itself was decent, the commercials cost me 10 IQ points. Documentaries about Nazis are there to suck you back in. The next thing you know, you’re sitting in your underwear and chortling heartily over “How I Met Your Mother,” and it’s time to start your TV detox all over again.
I wonder if Dr. Phil could help with that.
Mark LaFlamme is a Sun Journal staff writer. Email algebra problems, Russian novels and rocket science to mlaflamme@sunjournal.com so he can reboot his IQ.
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