57 Channels (And Nothin' On)

Gen X and older people remember the dark days of having only 3-4 channels on our television sets. ABC, NBC, CBS, and then later, FOX. We all loved that one because of The Simpsons, not knowing that its toxic news channel would later contribute to the rise of misinformation and the fall of democracy. Doh!

If you’re the youngest in your family, you were probably a human remote control back then. It was your job to get off the couch and manually turn the dial when someone wanted to see what was on another channel. This didn’t take long, considering there wasn’t a lot to look at, but it usually involved a lot of whining. I can still hear the soft “thunk” as the dial moved from spot to spot and my youngest sister Amy moaned, “JUST PICK SOMETHING, MY WRIST IS HURTING.”

The human remote control job was the easiest on Saturday nights when the whole country would just leave the dial on ABC to watch The Love Boat followed by Fantasy Island. We’d then go to sleep and have vivid nightmares about Mr. Roarke and Tattoo and the bad thing that happened to Loni Anderson. Why was that show so terrifying? I just looked up “scariest Fantasy Island episodes” and there were a lot of them.

Like season one, episode eleven when “Three women stay at a perfectly reconstructed replica of the beach house where they summered as teens; their vacation is disrupted when a black-gloved killer begins bumping the young women off one by one. The killer keep track of his kills by breaking the heads off dolls that resemble each of his victims. The episode takes a surprisingly dark turn when one of the women recounts her experience of being sexually assaulted during her school days, an event that has left her friends racked with guilt ever since for their inaction.”

“Smiles, everyone, smiles! And then nightmares.”

A fun tropical show featuring serial killers and sexual trauma! What a totally great thing to watch when you’re an unsupervised 11-year-old! No iCarly for us 70’s kids! We got death clowns and far too many stories about prostitutes!

And I wonder why I’m now obsessed with true crime podcasts and wide lapel white suits.

I’ve been thinking about the three channel option a lot lately because I kind of miss it. Now we all have multiple streaming services, and not only is it more confusing when trying to find something to watch, it’s way more expensive than even our stupid cable subscription used to be. My husband Chris and I recently tallied up how much we’re spending on Hulu, Netflix, Paramount+, Peacock, Discovery+, Prime Video, and Max and let me tell you: for what we pay a month, I could book a ghastly fantasy weekend on Mr. Roarke’s island. (Which, for me, would be something like being trapped in a Chevron bathroom with Larry the Cable Guy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and bad acoustics.)

We decided it was time to take inventory and figure out which streamers we don’t use that much and cancel them, but it’s hard. “Do you watch Peacock?” Chris asked, “Which shows?”

“Um, Real Housewives of Potomac, but that’s on hiatus, and I don’t like Real Housewives of New Jersey, or Real Housewives of Miami, although sometimes it can be fun if I’ve had a glass of wine, and then there’s Real Housewives of … what? Did you expect me to say Meet the Press?”

But after discussing everything we’ve been paying for, and reeling from the sticker shock, we cut back on a lot. Chris decided to replace them with a new streaming service that he says “gets every channel in the world!” If you’ve ever wanted to watch Maldivian Idol, this is the service for you. So far it seems okay, however it’s an underground company based in Yemen, so I’m not expecting much in the fall line-up besides identity theft.

Streaming services have also gotten too confusing to even know what to watch. You can scroll for hours and not find anything. I hear about most shows I watch through friends, and sometimes via news articles, but that’s not always reliable. Plus there are so many shows out there now that it’s overwhelming. (Unfortunately, not the adaptation of I’m Wearing Tunics Now, which was in the works for a bit.)

But wouldn’t it be nice to just have three channel options again? To not have to search? To not feel like you’re missing out on the most brilliant show ever made because you don’t want to pony up $25 a month for ScrewU+? And in my case, to not have to wonder why the algorithm thinks you’d enjoy a show about real estate in a Florida nudist colony?

Instead of wasted scrolling, how refreshing would it be to have your viewing choices on Tuesday at 8 p.m. be 1) a doctor show 2) a comedy about a bigot and 3) Joan Collins in shoulder pads pushing people into ponds? I think I may have just described CBS’s line up from the 70’s, but doesn’t that sound appealing?

Besides television shows, I’ve also been thinking about how much I miss the simple ritual of renting movies on the weekend. You’d drive to the store, browse the aisles, argue with your friends, feel either elation when your pick was in stock or sadness when it wasn’t, then drive home to pop the cinematic masterpiece into the VCR or DVD player. And then, if you’re me, you’d incur major late fees when you forgot to return it. (Which was super embarrassing the time a clerk asked me if I’d kept Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure for four weeks because I didn’t understand it.)

So with that in mind, imagine my shock and delight this past weekend when my son and I were in Bend, Oregon and we happened upon THIS:

It’s the last Blockbuster on the planet!

There’s even a documentary about it!

It felt like walking into the butter popcorn-scented past, and not just because they had a rather strange display for Russell Crowe’s Cinderella Man in the back corner. But besides merch, they also had new releases available to rent, like Poor Things. And it was full of happy people renting movies like it was the 90’s. I thought about doing that, too, for a second, but the last time I saw our DVD player was probably ten years ago when we sold it at a garage sale for a dollar.

I guess the point I’ve been circling this whole time is that I miss the simplicity we used to have in our choices. No, it wasn’t always ideal, and sometimes we were bored, and my sister Amy had a sore wrist, but it was also kind of great to know that we all watched the same Friends episode the night before. That as soon as you got to work, you’d have something to discuss. We had more shared experiences. Saying, “Did you see the TikTok with the cat in the swimming pool?” just isn’t the same. Asking your friend, “Did you see the Succession finale last night?” and hearing, “I’m only on season one so it’ll be a few months” just isn’t the same.

Would I actually be happier if we went back to the days of Be Kind, Rewind? I don’t know. But for right now it’s my fantasy island.

Thanks for reading!

-Wendi

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OTHER THINGS!

I’ve been negligent in asking for positive reviews of I’m Wearing Tunics Now, so if you read it and enjoyed it, please leave me a good one on Amazon! There are a few people that left me one-star reviews because they think I’m “pushing the liberal agenda” in a humor book about tunics and midlife, so any help is appreciated.

Read “Cillian Murphy’s Bedtime Routine” by me and Johanna Gohmann in The New Yorker! This piece managed to piss off both a major movie star and many residents of Ireland on the same day. My inbox was full o’ fun! (But please know that it’s satire, meant to show the stupidity of Irish stereotypes in America. We both love Ireland and Cillian — and the movie star that didn’t win the Oscar this year!)

Joan Collins is still alive and kicking and you can hear all about her memoir on my “It’s Pronounced Memwah” podcast.

And finally, I’m teaching a How to Write Personal Essays That Are Funny Class — sign up here!