Small, odd comforts - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

  Thanksgiving this year's an overly-concentrated attempt at comfort, and a personally exhausting one

with all the food prep and accompanying busy-ness. The follow-through of a self-pummeling with dense, high-caloric foods -- one plate of which put me down for a few hours Thursday, only to recover enough to go back for round two about five hours later. The driving hunger far more emotional than physical, as I certainly didn't need any more food that soon. It felt obligatory, though.
    Some of it's meant to acknowledge all the prep time - though as the one who put that time in it's not as if I was obliged to someone else - and some of it's a nostalgia for the days when my body could abide and quickly shrug off such culinary self-abuse.
     My recent viewing, aside from keeping up with the latest episode of Star Trek: Discovery (CBS All Access) as it moves through its so far very solid third season,

...and finally getting around to starting to watch the DC comics adaptation Titans (now on HBO-Max), which I'm already through the first six episodes of...

...has been an odd bit of comfort viewing I've slipped into during the pandemic: Old game shows, particularly ones with celebrity panelists/contestants.
     I'm not sure exactly when nor why it happened, but I've gotten into watching three iterations of Password - the original show, the follow-up Password Plus, and the post-Allen Ludden Super

Password - along with episodes of the celebrity couples game Tattletales, and different eras of What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth.
     I don't have any ready explanation for it, as I didn't grow up with any detectable interest in celebrities, their careers, nor especially their personal lives and relationships. I openly eschewed such information for most of my life. As best I can figure, it partially connects to the nostalgia of old tv shows some of the celebrities starred in, it all involves settled knowledge - places, dates and events involving people who almost to the last are dead - and so is comfortable and

reliable. Some of it, too, ties in with other reading and listening I've been doing, but that's its own field of rabbit holes.
     I've casually amassed a cache of knowledge about many of them, and as I watch each show I've developed a reflex. I note what year and time of year the episode is from (with the knowledge that game shows are typically filmed well in advance, with usually a week's worth filmed in a single day - so they break after each one just to change clothes to promote the illusion that a day's passed for them as it has for their audience - and that they usually took lunch between what will be the Wednesday and Thursday shows, which often gave people more of a chance to sneak in a few drinks or whatever other recreational substance they were into), and so tie it to what I know of the shows or movies they were working on at the time. As the celebrities were often placed there, in part, to help promote current shows, or help boost attendance for other engagements they had going on at venues across the country, there are usually ample time-markers if one pays attention. Often there's the sardonic view of hearing someone hyping their new or upcoming film or series, knowing that it will turn out to be a bomb. In one or two cases there's hype for something that ended up imploding, never to make it to air.

    There's also the occasionally unsavory and somewhat macabre elements that come from being a sort of Lord of Limbo, observing them from my relatively timeless realm where I can see the span of their lives, as it's the increasingly rare participant on these shows that's still alive.
     So, when I look at them in their era of the moment, I've become aware of which happy couple is soon to divorce, or who will be dying as soon as mere weeks later. Another two years for that, obviously strained, relationship.
Another seven before an undiagnosed heart injury from a stunt gone wrong the previous decade takes that one out. Twelve years before a brain tumor throws that one first into momentarily unexplained fitful behavior, then takes his life. Oh, this guy will go on vacation in Morocco between the end of his run hosting this show and when a new gig was set to start, but he'll get into a car accident, seem to be okay, but will suddenly die. Oh, she's an undiagnosed anorexic, and the tension's going to tear that marriage apart a couple years from this point... and so on, and on.

     It's all too much to risk getting into details with here, because - well, I'm sure everyone reading this has gone down some rabbit hole of information or others in this Internet age. The details become very interesting to our personal Alice, chasing the odd rabbit, but it's not worth the effort of trying to draw in the casual reader.
     Besides, I really need to recharge, and those who've been kind enough to silently read my usual prolix pieces could probably use a little break, too.
     I don't have much in the way of heads-up for shows in the coming week, though I will note that as this seems to be an HBO free weekend for some of the cable companies - offering access (which should include access to their On Demand library) - that the timing's good (if you have the free time and inclination) for those normally without HBO to catch up on the limited series The Undoing, which I'd previously suggested. It stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant in a tale of infidelity, murder, and privilege of wealth and social status. This will be wrapping with its sixth episode this Sunday, so if this HBO window opening applies to you, you can jump in and catch the whole story.

     I've yet to take a look at the What's Coming and Going in December pieces for the various streaming services, and most of my landmarks for the month - the start of the 10-part new adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand (CBS All Access) on December 17th, and the premiere of Wonder Woman 1984 on HBO-Max on December 25th, are all several weeks off.

     Oh! I did want to mention that, as I'd expected, today Netflix added those final seven episodes of Season 15 of Supernatural, so the complete series is now all in one place. I was disappointed that the look back on the series, a documentary/love letter to the fans, that they ran on the CW immediately before airing the final episode, didn't make the jump as part of the package.
     Next time I'll aim to have more suggestions -- and in the meantime feel free to look back at previous Fridays, as most things are hanging out there on one platform or another.

     If you're of a mind to, mention what you're enjoying watching, with a particular emphasis on comfort viewing, whether it's just some simple-minded entertainment and/or something old and overly familiar you're revisiting. Never any wrong answers, and nothing that needs to be defended. If you enjoy it or it settles you in some way, then it's what works for you.  -- Mike