November 5, 2006
Sunday
I am generally a fan of what I call television’s “Ten O’Clock Dramas,” even if they’re not broadcast at 10:00. I like to sit down at the end of the day and lose myself in some other world. In the 1980s I was a faithful watcher of St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law. Since then I’ve fallen in with the storylines on ER, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, and some of the many permutations of Law and Order. My current favorite is Friday Night Lights, which isn’t on on Fridays, nor at 10:00. I record it during its 8:00 slot (both on DVR and on a backup VCR tape since our cable service sometimes hiccups in the middle of a crucial recording) and watch it later. It’s what I’m planning as an antidote to too much political coverage this coming Tuesday.
Tonight Ron and I watched the regular episode of Cold Case, a series set in Philadelphia in which the crew of detectives investigates (and invariably solves) murders that have remained riddles for many years.
I watch Cold Case mostly because it’s on. I like watching Daniel Pino, but in general I think the plots are contrived and the characterizations too broad. The detectives ask questions that should have been asked at the time of the crime, and get people to remember things they didn’t think were worth mentioning at the time. (“You know, my sister was carrying the dead guy’s baby and my dad was pretty mad at him.”) They get a confession out of somebody who’s been carrying around a terrible secret. It’s a formula, and you can anticipate everything, including the moment at which Detective Lily has the insight that leads to the resolution.
Tonight’s episode was more than a little annoying in this regard. The case involved a murder that took place in the late 1970s among people who were “swingers.” That is, they took a casual approach to marital fidelity but a serious approach to hedonism, partaking in alcohol and other drugs with little regard for the well-being of their children. To squeeze the storyline into a one-hour show, the transformation of the unfortunate murder victim from a wholesome fifth grade teacher to a wanton bed hopper was way too fast. The perpetrator turned out to be someone who was sixteen at the time of the crime and who managed to conceal his involvement (both the physical evidence created when the deed was done and the emotional fallout that must have dogged him) for almost thirty years. I just didn’t buy it.
But what really bothered me the most was the spiral of 1970s flashbacks that the show sent me into.
I hated the Seventies. Or most of it, anyway. I was a young teacher establishing my career and my independent adult life and it should have been a wonderful, energizing time. And it was for a time until the fall of 1972, when I fell into a deep depression that lasted more than two years. I functioned at work but at home I slept a lot and cried through the weekends. I didn’t have much of a social life, and when I did go out, I was anxious for the event to be over. I managed to establish a relationship and get married in 1975. We bought a house not long afterward and I had the distraction of making my nest and getting to know my neighbors, so the last half of the decade was tolerable even if the marriage ultimately ended.
The Seventies was the era of high inflation, the energy crisis, the Nixon debacle, the fall of Saigon, and Legionnaires’ disease. We had daylight saving time in November, which meant that it was dark when I left for work and headed toward dusk when I started home. In my miserable state I’d go to bed right after school and wake up to see the hands on the clock at straight up six o’clock, and I wouldn’t know which six o’clock that was.
And looking at the fashions and hearing the music again left me wondering how anyone who wasn’t clinically depressed could have actually enjoyed the decade anyway. Our high definition tv made it seem as if you could actually touch the oily sheen on the polyester leisure suits with the double rows of white top stitching, the wing collars and heavy gold chains on the men, and the wrap dresses with eye-popping swirls on the women.
My favorite part of Cold Case is the cry at the beginning after the scene has been set and the opening credits roll. Tonight it captured my unhappiness from those days perfectly.