The scariest moment comes just after my last talk with TV Bob. The next night was my date with "The Bachelor. " Think about the "Father Knows Best" era and all it entailed, he says, then look at what we've got now -- MTV, breast jokes and women playing tough cops, doctors and lawyers all included -- and ask yourself: Which would you prefer? Fortunately for the novice television watcher, Channel 5 recycles two episodes a day beginning at 6 p. m. Puretaboo matters into her own hands movie. ) Homer was referring to a show-within-a-show, called "Police Cops, " which, as he was soon to discover, starred a handsome, street-smart detective named... Homer Simpson.
True, I've heard good things about "Six Feet Under, " which I never manage to catch, but I do drop in on two other HBO offerings, "The Mind of the Married Man" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm. " For it seems clear that what we share is more important than the ways we disagree. I try this theory out on TV Bob, carelessly dropping the loaded phrase "sexual harassment, " and he responds immediately with the First Amendment slippery slope argument (if we ban. Puretaboo matters into her own hands 2. TV Bob loves "Andy Griffith" more than any other television from the 1960s. There's the one with the cheekbones -- what was her name again?
Sometimes it was just the speed of the cutting that got to me: I wasn't used to this stuff, and could barely follow the images as they flashed by. Both Bobs confront the Ultimate TV Question! Who's that calling Aaron her "knight in shining armor all the way"? Puretaboo matters into her own hands full. You can vroom with wolves, zoom through deserts, slalom across snowfields and -- climb Mount Everest? But first, a word about... What's more, the Professor tells me, it was part of a wider television revolution, the biggest in broadcasting history, which went way beyond just the portrayal of women. There were "The Dean Martin Show" and "The Red Skelton Show, " and there was "Bewitched, " in which a beautiful woman with supernatural powers tries to renounce them, at her husband's insistence, in order to be a normal suburban housewife. 'I Never Thought I'd Say This About a TV Show'. Halfway through, I was ready to give the whole project up.
It's set in North Carolina. Yet while I rebelled against parental authority in plenty of ways, TV watching wasn't one of them. Even after his highly enjoyable tutorial on television's merits, both as a storytelling medium and as a window on the culture in which we all live and breathe, I expect to stick with my original decision. So I decided to keep going and watch "Friends, " which was the very first show my girls mentioned when I asked what TV their sixth- and seventh-grade pals talked about. Need some thoughts on the cultural significance of coffee? After their forbidden night of passion, Bianca enters Soren's dark, seductive world. "Angela, will you accept this rose? " A blues singer moaning, "Gonna buy me a Mercury. " I'm trying to look at the shows the Professor has talked to me about, plus a few I just stumble onto. There are Heather From Texas and Heather From Somewhere Else, and there is Brooke, the blonde with the plush teddy bear, and I think I hear the names Kyla and Hayley go by.
TV Bob says yes and I say no, but it's not an unreasonable question; both offer social satire with a sharp eye for the absurd. Moore's character was a smart, single woman with a successful professional career who, as viewers learned if they watched really carefully, had an active enough sex life to be using birth control pills. "On one level, this could be any schlub's commute, complete with the minutiae of the ticket. " He's off and riffing now. He headed off to graduate school at Northwestern, where he soon published a paper titled "Love Boat: High Art on the High Seas. " I knew that Virgil was the Roman poet who served as Dante's personal guide through Hell. You can measure its value in carats. But some of us are having a really hard time adjusting. I don't see any theoretical reason why it can't. Is Winona Ryder preempting election coverage? You can read "The Sopranos, " the Professor suggests, as a variation on James Thurber's immortal Walter Mitty tale -- Tony's not really a mobster, he's an accountant imagining that he's a mobster -- and almost nothing is lost.
At this particular moment, I'm not sure I will either. "Fastlane" will show you sexy people with guns and lots of stuff blowing up -- check it out! "I love this, " the Professor says as the soundtrack provides a musical "uh-oh" after Betty's line. Taco Bell will make sexy girls think you're cool -- check it out! Yet it's easy enough to suspend disbelief about these and other implausibilities, because the rewards -- subtle acting, lavish attention to detail, and the kind of dense, textured storytelling you carry around in your head for days, the way you do an engaging novel -- are so great. And I've got to admit, it's been fun. Then I rewound it and watched it again. Cue the shot of the naked blonde in the shower. Which one prefers candle wax to candlelight behind closed doors? As the 1970s began, they canceled smash hits like "Gomer Pyle, " "Green Acres" and "The Beverly Hillbillies, " and they replaced them with a startling new breed of socially "relevant" programs such as "Mary Tyler Moore, " "All in the Family" and "M*A*S*H, " all of which became smash hits in their turn.
I also see a segment of "The Real World" -- the Professor has told me that this granddaddy of all reality shows is "catnip" to the 11- and 12-year-old set -- in which the cast mostly sits around talking about sex.