I don’t know if I’m proud of this, but I have to admit that my family watches a lot of TV. And if we can’t claim family bonding rituals over the Scrabble board, we can at least take pride in the fact that we are experiencing the TV together, staring in the same direction heaped under afghans on the same couch.
When my kids were little, I might have taken the initiative to hoist my keester off the couch, play a game or grab a book and curl up on the bed with my progeny spread out around me. Now, I’ve caved in to the inertia of passive entertainment—hey, if you don’t like it, go play a computer game or zone out to your Ipod.
Now that’s parenting.
Lest you start planning an intervention on behalf of my poor children who are obviously receiving substandard cultural influences, please know that we sometimes watch shows like “Planet Earth” and…well, that’s pretty much it in the educational column. I’ll cop to the fact that we’re much more likely to be watching “Ugly Betty”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, “House” and my seasonal favorites, “American Idol” and “Dancing with the Stars”.
Now my teenagers have their own shows, most of which I think caused the V-Chip in my TV to explode—“The Secret Life of Teenagers”, “Gossip Girl”, “Real World”, etc—but they will still join us for some “wholesome” family viewing. If they are completely desperate. Or all ready asleep on the couch.
But you know, you can make what you want out of family time. Even when it involves staring at the flat screen. For instance, my youngest has created a ritual around “American Idol” nights. We like to watch together in our rec room, which has a long sectional sofa and a large TV. So on Idol night, she stretches ribbon across the entry to the room and allows access to only those who have made a “reservation”. She will check your name off a list in her folder and escort you to your assigned seat on the couch. Everyone goes through this process, even the dog. We listen carefully to the judges’ critiques—except for when Paula speaks, when I might take a quick toilet break or a catnap—and have gotten a bit of a music education. Now my daughter understands what it means when I describe her dad’s singing voice as “completely wretched” with a British accent.
“Dancing with the Stars” nights involve a lot of dancing during the commercials. Except for me—I’m the judge. And I am usually handing out raspberries rather than raves—no natural rhythm in this house! Which makes it all the more hypocritical that we have spirited discussions about some of the dancers and their very sketchy abilities. But even my daughter could see that Steve Wozniak deserved to be booted this week before the slightly less dubious Denise Richards. Steve’s partner, Karina Smirnoff, is virtually grimacing with embarrassment after each dance. And the judges are searching for paddles with negative numbers on them to score him with. Surely it won’t be long before Karina (gladly, I’m sure!) and Steve get jettisoned and she can join her fiancé, Maksim “My Chest is on Fire” Chmerkvoskiy (who was attached to the beautiful but bumbly Denise Richards).
Can you see that I am just completely a loser here?
And there are sub-rituals. I usually DVR one of my faves, “24”, since it is airs opposite the aforementioned “Dancing”. And my oldest daughter and I try to watch this together after school the next day. We expel the same sigh of frustration at the end of each episode that the show has shockingly, once again, left us with a cliffhanger! My two oldest daughters together have roped me into Food Network’s “Ace of Cakes”, which follows the real life adventures of Charm City Cakes in Baltimore and the extravagant custom-order cakes they make. That show has inspired some very interesting conversations about careers and how my kids can apply their creativity and passions to make a living. We are even going to try to visit the bakery when we are in Baltimore in April.
Then my husband and my youngest break away for their own little ritual watching “Ugly Betty”—which I sometimes watch with them—and “Ghost Whisperer”—which you would never find me watching even if a nuclear holocaust wiped out all television transmission and this one program somehow survived. I have to draw the line somewhere.
Every once in a while, I feel a pang of guilt that we have so many TV moments together. I’m trying to remember what my habits were growing up, and I do seem to recall there was a good amount of couch time. Who could forget the “Partridge Family/Brady Bunch” dynamic duo? Or “Donny and Marie”, “Sonny and Cher”, and my personal favorite, “Lost in Space”. Man, I loved that show!
Now that I think about it, my sister and I had some rituals of our own. Especially on Saturday nights. We would get in our jammies, wash up, grab some blankets and settle in on the couch to watch Saturday Night Live. We fully intended to fall asleep right there, and often woke up to the only program that aired after 1:00 a.m.—a static picture of the American flag set to the soundtrack of an air raid siren.
My husband talks nostalgically of his family’s weekly TV event watching “The Wonderful World of Disney” on Sunday nights. He and his brothers had the once-a-week thrill of eating dinner off of those foldable TV trays right there in the family room. As they enjoyed the rare treat of TV-side dining on grilled cheese and root beer floats, my mother-in-law must have enjoyed the relative peace and harmony. That poor woman could have used a good dose of Nickelodeon to get her through her days.
So there’s probably a genetic component at work on both sides. But maybe it’s also the economy, the nature of the winter months, or maybe my people are just human tubers. But we’ve managed to cobble together our own fun and family togetherness using the path of least resistance. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next blackout to start reading “Wuthering Heights”. My kids will like that one—they watched it last month on The Movie Channel.
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