In a lot of homes around West Plains, evenings probably follow a familiar rhythm. Supper is eaten and cleaned up, the day is finally done, and we settle into the living room for a couple of hours before heading to bed. We are of a certain age, if you know what I mean, so bedtime usually arrives well before 10.
At our house, that’s when the dogs take their assigned positions. Jonesy, 16 pounds of Morkie neediness, must perch on the recliner footrest or none of us will know peace. Mookie, 7 pounds of terror unless he’s trembling because he’s missing his sweater, claims my lap. Only then do we reach for the remote.
And that is when the real struggle begins.
What are we watching?
Which show is it?
Is that Netflix? No, Paramount. That’s right. Mayor of Kingstown is on Paramount.
We live in a time when nearly every show ever made is available at the push of a button. We can watch a movie still in theaters, binge an entire season of a new show in a weekend (I’m looking at you, Bridgerton), or revisit Schitt’s Creek as many times as our stomach muscles can tolerate the laughter (umm, David!). And yet, some nights we spend more time scrolling than watching.
I sometimes wonder if it was easier when Thursday night was appointment TV. I remember racing through the dishes, so I wouldn’t miss Monica and Ross, or Jerry Seinfeld’s opening monologue. Everyone watched that same thing at the same time, and the next morning, you knew exactly what people would be talking about (do you remember who shot JR?).
There was something especially magical about Sunday nights when I was a kid. No matter what chaos the weekend had delivered, I could count on The Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I’m convinced I learned more about animals in 1982 from television than I ever did in a science class at West Plains Middle School. Jim Fowler, dodging danger while Marlin Perkins narrated safely from afar, was the real star, but that is another column.
After that came Tinkerbell, floating across the screen to introduce The Wonderful World of Disney. Those nights taught us patience. Commercial breaks were for bathroom sprints and snack runs, and you hurried back because there was no pause button, no rewind, and no way to catch it later. If you missed it, you waited and hoped for a rerun in the summer.
Now, television is on demand, and I catch myself getting irritated when shows only release one episode a week. I find myself lecturing the TV like an errant child: What do you mean you didn’t drop the whole season of The Pitt, HBO Max!
The other night, while my husband Jeff and I were doing our usual dance through the streaming services, I suggested we watch Law & Order. It was Thursday, after all. He looked at me in horror.
“With commercials?”
That was a hard no. We would have to wait until the next night, when it would appear on Peacock, blissfully free of interruptions.
That is when it hit me. Gen X might be the first generation to live through every phase of television. Appointment viewing. Three channels. Cable. DVRs. DVDs. Streaming. And now, somehow, there are too many choices.
We went from everyone watching the same thing to not being able to remember what we were watching at all. Maybe that one is the evolution of television or the aging of my brain. Regardless, that is part of the quiet charm of midlife TV. It’s not really about the show. It’s about the ritual. The sofa. The dogs. The bowl of ice cream. The person sitting next to you at the end of the day. The familiar rhythm that hasn’t changed nearly as much as the technology has.
Whether it was Wild Kingdom or Hulu, Seinfeld or streaming, Thursday night or “what platform is that on again,” the point was never what we watched.
It was that we watched it together.
And in a world that changes faster than the remote can keep up with, that part still matters.
As always and with love,
Laura
Laura (Wright) Jones is a former West Plains resident and a writer now living in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley with her husband Jeff and their two Morkies Jonesy and Mookie. Her column, “Dear West Plains,” is a love letter to her hometown and the stories that shaped her. Her email address is laura.jones062869@gmail.com
