The Ease of Old Television
On a recent episode of This American Life called "Rerun," inquisitive host Ira Glass probes producer Starlee Kine’s infatuation with television reruns. The reruns of Kine’s choosing follow classic sitcom patterns: middle-class, suburban family raises high school-age children (episodes include both mayhem and sentimentality) [Boy Meets World, Home Improvement]; thirty-somethings (in New York City) struggle to carve out a niche [Caroline in the City, Seinfeld, Friends, Will and Grace]; quirky hodgepodge of characters interact and a comedy of manners ensues [Fraiser, Cheers, Newhart]. Kine elaborates by simply stating that reruns, which are indeed silly and blase, are nonetheless comforting. Comforting, she says, with the same sort of relaxed, confidence that the word ‘baby’ is said as you hold a sleeping, tightly swaddled infant - a just-born, wistful (i.e., wish-I-was-back-where-it-is-quiet-and-warm) infant.
Although I do not watch a lot of rerun television currently, I used to. I can recall watching the same episodes of The Facts of Life and Little House on the Prairie again and again during my middle school days. When I visit friends or family who have cable, I am quick to tune into Nick-at-Nite to watch Endora foil Samantha and Darren’s dinner parties or to smile at the Professor’s seventy-eighth attempt to get the gang off the island or to laugh as Lucy and Ethel tackle yet another hair-brained scheme. There is truly something comforting about the familiar beat of the American sitcom when it leaves primetime and moves into the late afternoon or night-owl slots.
And perhaps it doesn’t necessarily have to be even an American program ...
Joel and I weathered the winter blues successfully this year due in some part to reruns of the BBC’s All Creatures Great and Small series. Even now, I get a cozy, snuggly feeling as I think of the routine toils of our country vet hero, James Herriot, campaigning against the stubborn will of livestock or family pets, all the while smirking at the indomitable spirit of his partners, Siegfried and Tristan. Each episode followed a similar rhythm: James, overworked in the farmyards of pre-war England by his employer, manages to close each weary day with a cheerful crooked smile (and a pint of the county‘s best).
In so very many aspects of our lives, plot is the defining factor. We need to look no further than our engagement calendars or PDAs for proof positive of my assessment. If you require more evidence, look to your letters or emails; in our correspondence, we inquire, “What’s your latest?” as though we seek neat, bullet points or factoids of friends’ daily habits or families’ circumstances. However, in the domain of the rerun, we let plot fall to the wayside with the self-assurance that we will always know how the show will end. Instead, we embrace the setting, or the lifestyle, or the characters of a familiar world that eases us through our own daily slog.