Touched by an Angel

I get really attached to my TV shows.

Growing up, my main show (aided and abetted by my family, of course) was Star Trek. Wesley Crusher was my first crush (though now it’s switched to Data). Dad would tape it when it showed in the evenings, which was past my sister’s and my bedtime, and we would watch it as a family the next evening, munching our dinners in the living room in front of the TV.

In my adolescence our family switched to The Pretender. I have since bought the first season of this show, which completely enthralled me when I was younger, and found it to be far more obvious with its undercurrents than I remembered, but still palatable. The thing is, it was VERY mid-90s, and feels distinctly dated. The opening lines of the theme boom out in an Unsolved Mysteries voice over a black screen with the lines verbatim represented in white letters: "THERE ARE PRETENDERS AMONG US." I mean, ack. We lost interest in the show when it prolonged itself beyond reason, and became pointless without resolving any of the undercurrent conflicts.

College was the era of Dark Angel. This remains one my all-time favorites, and every time I watch it through till the end of its brief life, I grow enraged at Fox all over again for cancelling it after only two seasons. Leigh Ann and I agree that one of its major appeals is its dystopic setting, with a kick-ass heroine just trying to make it in a harsh and beat-down world. Leigh Ann and I began saying, "Dark Angel is life" due to the gorgeous and relevant themes that this show focuses on – nearly all dealing with social justice. And then "Dark Angel is life" became a catch-phrase for the frequency with which we would see cast members in other movies, TV shows, and commercials. Those actors are everywhere, especially the small bit part actors.

The first year of post-college was House. I maintain that it has an excellent first season – the brilliancy of the indirect characterization of House through his associates, and some of the more amazing episodes which play with narrative structure, make it an incredible watch. But the second season failed and boiled itself down to runny melodrama, and I underwent a bitter divorce from the show.

This year, nearly a decade after missing its first airing, and all its subsequent airings, I fell in love with Buffy, and then with Angel. Leigh Ann had purchased every season, and became my own personal Netflix administrator, mailing me the seasons as I went through them. With a few several-month breaks in between viewings, I managed to finish all twelve seasons of both shows combined (with Leigh Ann, of course! She took a few trips out to South Bend for the express purpose of watching the shows) in just under exactly one year.

Angel sustained me through the summer. Heartbroken over my job loss and the betrayal of good friends at work, alone, terrified of the future and hard-pressed to find employment, I spent a lot of my days curled on the couch escaping to L.A. (Haha.) I found a great deal of strength and courage from the events, characters, and themes of the show, particularly as it progressed to Seasons Four and Five. Episodes dealing with disillusionment, doubt, the death of idealism, and the necessity, always, of fighting encouraged me not to give up.

Perhaps that sounds silly. But story has always been paramount in my interpretation of life and the world, and good television can be easily as powerful as good fiction, with just as many layers to unwind. Leigh Ann and I spent hours, days, and weeks on the phone talking about the show. I’m not sure that I would have survived well without it.

Now the show du jour is Bones. Leigh Ann and I started watching it, of course, because David Boreanaz is the co-star, and we were sad and let-down after the abrupt finish of Angel (Damn you, Fox! Cancelling all my favorite shows!). But then we fell head over heels in love with the show itself, with the interplay and deep, mostly unspoken intimacy that develops between Booth and Brennan, without putting them in a relationship; with the supporting characters; with the writing; with the skillful way the show avoids the formulaic trap into which House fell by focusing on the characters without sacrificing the strength of the episodic plots; with the even more skillful avoidance of melodrama by placing the characters’ most deep-seated issues (Brennan trying to locate her father, who has been missing since she was little; Booth dealing with seldom seeing his son, and his gambling addiction) at a low boil – occasionally they rise to the surface for some fantastic drama, but mostly they stay underneath and undealt with, while the characters go through the daily business of their lives.

And the show is pure and wonderful escape. It went on hiatus while the World Series aired, and I really think that the recent deepening of my depression partially stems from the inability to escape every week into the world of Bones. I’m excited beyond belief that it’s coming back tonight – and dealing with the Jon Benet case – AND casting MP’s very own cousin as the slain girl!

Then last night I started watching Firefly. Another of Joss Whedon’s, it takes place in the space-traveled future. And I fell hard in love. It has the best pilot I’ve ever seen, fast action, humor, poignancy, good characters.

There have been other shows, of course. I watched and loved most of Sports Night, and have been slowly and delightedly working my way through Arrested Development and Veronica Mars.

I love books. I’ve been reading a lot of my old favorites lately, particularly Madeleine L’Engle’s works. But I also love TV. Clearly science fiction and fantasy are my dearest genres -- partly because they tap directly into myth, the are myth, and myth is the human race's oldest way of telling stories. It's the First Art of Story.

Whatever gets you through, right?