My son caught me crying at her funeral. “I just don’t understand why she had to die. And in such an awful way. Why did that have to happen?” I sobbed. He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “She probably wanted to leave the show.”
It used to amaze me when friends would talk about characters in a TV series as if they were real people. They would commiserate about how awful someone was and argue about whether a relationship would last. When it seemed as though the whole country was asking, “Who shot J. R.?” I didn’t even know who J. R. was.
My parents were the last people on earth to buy a television set. I remember the excitement the night my father arrived home with the box. My brother and I would finally be normal. But the pink Motorola was a disappointment. How could my father have bought the TV with the smallest screen in the world? I decided it was hardly worth watching and I put my nose in a book.
After that, even with bigger TV screens and the humiliation of often being left out of a conversation, I just never got hooked on any TV program. I’d nod when a friend suggested some series on Netflix, not wanting to admit I didn’t have Netflix. People would speak of streaming something and my eyes would glaze over because I don’t know how to do that. I do have the decency to be embarrassed that I’m so far behind the times, and I know I could do the daily crossword puzzle much faster if I watched TV.
All this changed last March. In an alignment of the stars, the coronavirus had me isolated, very depressed, and frightened; I had finished all the library books I had taken out (need I say, I don’t like reading on a device); and a friend sent me the link to subscribe to Acorn TV, along with the recommendation for “A Place To Call Home.” There were three seasons; if I watched one, or maybe two, episodes a night, I could be distracted for a long time. It would be the perfect thing to get me through.
It was no surprise to me—I’ve never been a one or two kind of person—that I stayed up until midnight several nights in a row. I liked the escape a series provided, so I began looking for a new one. Nothing compared to “A Place To Call Home,” but I did enjoy a few different series. I also found many I was done with after the first episode. There was always “Vera,” but I couldn’t binge on her. It seemed excessive to set up some other account, and thankfully I was soon escaping through borrowing books from friends.
Just when I was in a funk and a rut, an email from Acorn announced the new show “McLeod’s Daughters,” the story of two sisters, set in Australia. I was hooked from the first episode. Five women are running a farm—sheep and cattle—and at the beginning of each episode, they ride abreast across the screen into the open land while a haunting song plays in the background. I needed the schmaltz. There were more than 20 episodes in the first season, each full of relationship complications and disasters on the farm. I have to admit I got a bit sick of the sheep, but I loved the characters and the setting. There was a wait before season two and again until season three, but I knew they were coming, and the anticipation buoyed me.
For the first time, I identified with those friends who had gotten emotionally involved with characters in a TV show. Given that I didn’t have many real people with whom to interact, I looked forward to evenings (I drew the line at daytime viewing) when I could connect with the Aussies.
And so it was that my son found me sobbing that night. His words were sobering and almost jolted me out of my sadness. Then I became angry—at the actress and the scriptwriter and the director. She shouldn’t have left the show, didn’t she have any sense of responsibility to the people watching? And why did the writer and director have to traumatize viewers with such a horrible death?
I Googled the show the next day. Turns out I was not the only sad and angry viewer.
There were a few more episodes in season three, and a new actress had come on the scene. But I didn’t like her, and watching only made me sad that the other woman was dead. I was done with the show, with Acorn, with TV. Thank goodness the library has curbside pickup.
