Our home has three TVs. For those under 22, three flat screens. In the last century, where I hail from, we had a TV set. It wasn’t a set like a set of silverware; it was just one TV, but people called it a set.
And to watch this set, which was just one, you only needed a wall. The set came with a plug with prongs attached to a power cord that you stuck into a wall socket. Back then, we didn’t shove our TV cords and wires into the wall. Only mobsters hid things in walls. If you didn’t pay your local mob guy the “vig,” into the wall you went.
TV was free to watch; we had no providers. Now AT&T and DirecTV say they are our providers. Really, my wife and I are their providers. We provide them with hundreds of dollars a month so they can make us go through hell trying to find something decent to watch. We are bundled with AT&T; supposedly, this saves us money. If we opt out and unbundle, our bill goes from a few hundred to a kidney donation.
We have Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon and Apple. Once in a blue moon, I land on something watchable. I am now at an age where I can’t watch unmarried young people in horrible relationships complaining about their horrid sex lives or what scum the opposite sex is. I’ve tried watching a few of these shows, and if I last 10 minutes, it’s a miracle.
Many new shows portray a dark, bleak, Kafkaesque world where the lead actors are sad, broken people who never find a way out of misery. If you believe what they espouse, life seems to have less meaning than it used to. Bring on Bob Newhart, “The Golden Girls” or “McHale’s Navy.” I was always guaranteed to walk away smiling.
I’ve come very close to tossing a brick through my flat screen when they keep asking me to scan a QR code that I just scanned the night before. Then they send six numbers for me to enter that usually don’t work, so they send another six. When I enter my password, unbeknownst to me, I find out my wife changed it.
These six-number codes are only valid for 10 minutes, so if you’re too slow, you’ll have to scan again. I called my wife about the password she changed and realized I was the one who changed it and hadn’t written it down. I’m also never sure whose email the different sites are under. Sometimes I text my family chat to ask whoever gets a code to send it to me. That means more QR scans, more codes and a new password.
If I try watching on my phone, I might need facial recognition, which is hit-or-miss, depending on how many salted pretzels I ate the day before. If I ate too many and my face is puffed up, it may ask for the password I changed and didn’t write down.
When TV was free, somehow there was always something to watch. It was a very Norman Rockwell experience. The whole family would gather in the living room. The dog was asleep on the woven rug. The goldfish bowl had one live one swimming and one dead one floating. We all watched the same show together. We sat down, waited for the TV to warm up, and there it was. If my mother did not like the show, she would sit with us and knit. If the phone rang in the kitchen, someone would say, “Let it ring; they’ll call back.” Even the bad shows seemed interesting and fun. Parents didn’t have to worry that we’d be exposed to someone who was completely exposed. Mary Tyler Moore never took her top off, and Andy Griffith never took his pants off in front of Aunt Bee. Though unrealistic, the old shows were happy families that always found solutions.
Like us, the TV back then went to sleep. Between midnight and one, the stations would play the Star-Spangled Banner, wave the American flag, then go to black ’til 5 a.m. There was nothing on, and very much like today, nothing to watch.
Mark Schiff is a comedian, actor and writer and hosts, along with Danny Lobell, the “We Think It’s Funny” podcast. His new book is “Why Not? Lessons on Comedy, Courage and Chutzpah.”
