It is us with the TV. We are all together there with the TV, and the TV is not somehow the same as the movies. Someone else is in charge of what goes on the TV besides my mom, so I will not see faces melting on the TV by accident. The TV is safe for now.
In the daytime there are reruns, and early in the day there are deep reruns, reruns from a truly bygone era. I can’t connect to these reruns, they rely on a different humor and value system, such as the comedy of owning an icebox, or having a paper route. The value system I like is based more on soap operas and comic parodies of soap operas and films that are way over my head. I do it, sometimes. Yes, I watch Andy Griffith, I have to. There is nothing else on. But I do not understand about Davy Crockett. I simply do not. The theme song begins and I fly into a rage. I have to go outside. There is no choice. I have to go outside for at least an hour till it stops.
But then there is this golden twilight hour which is a transition period. A period where there are reruns of existing programs, reruns of the programs that are actually new and ongoing programs or programs at least with the potential for the new, the new and the old all at once! I can watch reruns in the day and then later, at night, watch new versions of the reruns. So I can watch M*A*S*H and it will be one with Trapper and Radar and Henry, and then an hour or so later, a new episode comes on with B.J. and Klinger and Colonel Potter. I have my preferences. I don’t like B.J., I like Trapper. Trapper has curly blond hair and I think he is funnier. I think B.J.’s hair is a little bit thinning. Trapper and Hawkeye always wear their bathrobes, and Trapper’s is blue. B.J. pretty much never wears a bathrobe. Plus I think he is married, and so there are no romantic antics. I enjoy the romantic antics. I don’t mind Klinger, but I prefer Radar. He has a teddy bear and seems very competent. With M*A*S*H, I like the reruns best: everything gets serious after Henry dies. Everything gets very, very serious. I watch the episode where Hawkeye has dreams. It is the best and scariest episode ever of M*A*S*H, even though it is after Trapper, but then for a long time, I am scared to be drifting in a boat surrounded by prosthetic limbs. In that dream Hawkeye just drifts in a boat through a cove filled with plastic arms and legs, and then, he takes off his own arms and tosses them in and he is armless, in his fatigues, in his red bathrobe, which he always wears over his fatigues, like he’s got a chill or something, but he’s still on the job. Or like he is always in a state of sleeping or dreaming.
I want to be Hawkeye. I want to be from Crabapple Cove and have a dad who reads Last of the Mohicans while taking me out in our rowboat on the bay or inlet. My dad does not read so good, but he has a boat. I rarely go out in it, because it is a basspro type boat, that can go speedy or that can purr along at a good clip for trolling, and the last time I went out in it we were trolling and my favorite bunny went overboard and no one would go back for her. I began a tantrum. This went on for days. I don’t go on the boat now except when it is parked in the driveway. I like the boat, it is red and sparkly and even the astro-turf carpeting is red. I like the rubber worms that go with the boat which are red and purple and jelly; they look edible. I try to eat them. Then I can only go on the boat in the driveway chaperoned.
It’s hard to know how time works because of M*A*S*H, because of all the back and forth between the most present moments and the reruns. I forget which things are part of the narrative of the reruns and which things are part of the narrative of the current episodes. There is definitely a breakdown of linearity. And when is it set anyway? It is supposed to be the ’50s perhaps, but at a certain point they just abandon the look of the ’50s and everyone just looks like the ’70s as if a war has been going for twenty-five years. It seems like it is about Vietnam, but it isn’t. My mother likes me to understand about Vietnam, but I still don’t understand about Vietnam. I definitely don’t understand about Korea. Are these places or are these wars? First they are places. But for my mom they are only wars?
Why are there so many shows that are supposed to be the ’50s but which look like the ’70s? Why is this? There is the one with Andy and Opie, and the one with Fonzie, Potsie, and Chachi, and the one with Shirley, Lenny, and Squiggy. Everyone is just trying to get by in dreary cities like Milwaukee or Cincinnati in the ’50s. People live in basements and over garages, and they will do almost anything for a buck, like working in breweries or waiting tables or trying to rig a dance contest. And their names are all diminutives of bigger names, like they are the namesakes of their own names. My brother and I are namesakes after my father, already, but Mom tacks an ‘ie’ on my name and on my brother’s name. Everyone endures the eee-sound on their name until they can’t anymore, until they are grown. That’s how it works.
Everyone is always waiting for Taxi to come on. Everyone loves Taxi. Taxi is totally the now. Except my brother. My brother is elsewhere.
There are also the variety shows. We watch the more Western-based ones. The ones where sisters dress in matching chiffon ball gowns and do musical numbers and, presumably, comedic skits. Or where everything takes place in a cornfield, or on a hayride, and there are hillbillies and/or everyone makes fun of women’s lib. My mom is a secretary and she subscribes to Ms. Magazine. She is unconvinced by the Western variety programs, possibly because of the short shorts or the implants or the way the women all seem dumb beyond imagination. I like them. Sometimes there is puppet crossover from kid-type variety shows, and the colors are lurid, outrageous, like in the funny papers.
My mom comes home early one afternoon and catches me watching Andy Griffith because I have absolutely no choice.
Your brother looked just like Opie when he was that age, my mom says. (Lie.) And he couldn’t pronounce RFD, but he begged to watch it. (Doubtful.) My mom offers the mangled pronunciation of RFD as per her memory of my brother’s youth tongue. This, I think, is exactly why he won’t sit with you at the movies.
All my adventures are there, inside the TV.