Living Small

My So-Called Life

When David and I heard that My So-Called Life was coming out on DVD, we added it to our Netflix queue right away.  We had both seen the series during its brief lifespan in 1994, but wanted to watch it again for its nostalgia value.  The show had different meanings for each of us when it was originally on television.  I was fifteen years old, a sophomore in high school, the same age as the characters on the show.  Angela Chase was exactly who I wanted to be, if I had had the guts to follow my heart, and I could relate so well to all of her musings and insights.  David was a couple of years out of college and already felt very far away from high school, but could still relate.  Watching the first three episodes together, he remembered the show much better than I did.  It was interesting to see high school from a distance, to realize that many of the things Angela was concerned with, although they certainly seemed life-or-death matters when I was fifteen, just aren't as big of a deal as the seemed at the time.  The music, however, took me right back to the moment in which everything mattered way too much.  It was also a bit disconcerting to realize that my sister is now almost fifteen and will be a sophomore next year, and I can't help wondering what she would think of the show.  How similar or different is her high school life thirteen years later?

Jack is Back!

Last night David and I watched the first episode of season six of 24.  It had been over a year since we finished season five, and it was hard to remember who all the characters were and where things had left off.  At the end of season five, Jack Bauer was on a boat headed for a Chinese prison, and we were sure we would never see him again.  But sure enough, he is back and as tough as ever.  I have posted before about how this show puts uncomfortable thoughts into my head, about how it is pretty much just propaganda for Bush's war on terror, and this season is starting out to be no different.  In the first episode of the season, the U.S. government hands him over to a terrorist who wants to avenge his brother's torture and death at Jack's hands.  He subjects Jack to the same kind of torture, saying, "this is what you did to my brother."  My immediate thought -- "your brother deserved it."  And then I caught myself, and remembered that nobody deserves to be tortured.  So why do we watch it?  Because it is still fun and Kiefer Sutherland is still hot!

Family Ties Revisited

In case you haven't been keeping up with comments, it turns out that good friends of ours have also been watching the first season of Family Ties this week.  Given that we never discussed it with each other and it wasn't on our Netflix queue (yes, we cheat on Netflix by going to the video store too!), this may be the world's strangest coincidence.  Anyway, Josh felt that I was being too hard on Family Ties and, now that I have watched about five more episodes, I'll admit that he was probably right.  The premise of the show -- progressive parents, conservative kids -- poses an important question: how can parents pass their values on to their children when there are so many other influences out there?  Either that or it simply asserts that values skip generations -- when the grandparents showed up, their values seemed much more aligned with Alex and Mallory's values than with Elise and Stephen's. 

I particularly liked the episode where Alex leaves his job at the independent grocery store to become stockboy #28 at the big chain.  He is excited about the possibility of moving up the corporate ladder until his mom asks when he will ever "arrive," and points out that she and the father both chose less high-powered and high-paying careers (for example, the dad works for public television instead of a network) because other things (presumably family) are more important. 

I always appreciated the tension between the parents' liberal values and Alex's conservatism, which seemed particularly timely in the eighties with the Republican ascendancy.  Mallory, however, really bothers me.  I guess she is supposed to be "girly" in contrast to her mother's feminism, but her character perpetuates every stereotype about girls there is.  As a child, I looked up to her, and I now resent having being given her as a role model.  I particularly hate the fact that she is bad at math and would rather go shoppoing than read a book. 

Jennifer, of course, is the contrast to both Alex and Mallory, and is the one who always points out how the parents were right after all.  In the episode where the parents are jailed for protesting nuclear weapons, when Alex and Mallory think they are being selfish, Jennifer sees them as heroes (after her grandmother points this out).  I appreciate that Jennifer is there to serve as a counterweight to her siblings, but hearing the "right" values spouted out by a nine-year-old is also disconcerting.

Well, I started out by saying that I had been too hard on the show, and now I'm complaining about it again.  I will admit, however, that I'm looking forward to the second season coming out on DVD!  I also agree with Josh that the first season deals with important issues that get glamorized (if dealt with at all) on contemporary television shows.  And it looks like I was wrong about the location -- according to the Wikipedia entry on Family Ties, they are in suburban Columbus, not Sandusky.

Nostalgia

When David and I were in Sandusky, Ohio last weekend, we started talking about the television show Family Ties, which was set in Sandusky.  How I picked that up as a seven-year-old living in Los Angeles, I'm not quite sure, but somehow I was very aware of their Midwestern locale. 

As we drove past Sandusky High School, I wondered aloud whether Family Ties was available on DVD, so last night David rented the first disc of the first season, and we watched the first two episodes.  I couldn't believe how bad it was!  It was disappointing, since I had such fond memories of the show from my childhood.  Perhaps it is just dated, or maybe television has gotten better since then.  People always complain about how bad television is now (reality shows, etc.), but I think television has actually gotten better over time. Granted, there probably are more bad shows now, but there are more shows in general, so there are also more good shows, and the good ones are much better than they used to be. 

"Better" may actually be a relative concept.  I think television has gotten more realistic, in the sense that the acting is less overdone and the shows now are set in real time and space.  For example, in the first episode of Family Ties, Alex said that he was seventeen years old.  David commented that he will probably remain seventeen for the first three years of the show, since the show was on for several years before his character went to college.  Now television writers seem to be much more careful about letting characters age.  I like this kind of realism, so to me it makes a show better.  I'm sure I'll still watch at least the rest of the disc, though, at least for nostalgia value.