“We’re gladiators… in suits.”
Okay, I made it this far, I guess it’s okay to go all the way. My name is Sam. And I’m addicted to Scandal.
Now, before you judge me let me tell you the whole story. For years I declared the show too frivolous for me to pursue, while I watched other programs more geared to using my brain, shows like Fringe and Elementary. But somehow, written across the margins when I was watching other programs on Netflix, or on commercial teasers, I couldn’t help but still be inundated with the show I had sworn not to watch.
Then a friend of mine started watching it and dared me to give it a shot. If you don’t know me very well, let me tell you I’m a bit like Marty McFly. I’ve never met a dare I didn’t think was worth the effort to take on. So I signed into Netflix and I watched the first episode. From the outset I was hooked, like a junkie taking his first hit. That initial episode blended into the next, and before I knew it the first season was over, and I found myself arguing with the TV. “Are you serious?” I asked the oblivious characters when they made stupid mistake after stupid mistake.
Yes, I know it’s all just smoke and mirrors, what passes for this decade’s nighttime soap opera, like Dynasty and Falcon’s Crest before it, but that doesn’t stop me getting invested. I marvel at the characters who look the other way when things are happening right in front of their faces, at the ones who continue their patterns of behavior that I know will lead them into trouble later in the season, and at the ones who need redemption more than anything else but who will probably never get it. I watch because I know these characters.
The characters on Scandal are people I’ve gone to school with. They’re co-workers and former bosses. They’re family members and acquaintances. They’re people I’ve been before, and people I have the possibility of being before all is said and done. They live and breathe just like people in my life. They have their own issues and problems like real people do. I can just follow the plotline better with them, and for that I’m grateful. Somehow these characters and this fictitious world has captured the zeitgeist of what the real world might truly be in the shadows, and that’s its appeal right there.
So yes, I watch in bunches, quite voraciously when I get the chance. But don’t judge me because we all have our guilty pleasures, don’t we? Well, don’t we?
Sam
I’ve been in a “Friends” mood lately, what with my analysis of the friend attraction rate, my ode to “Friends,” the television show, in my latest Water Cooler Musings, and my watching of the first half of the final season’s episodes in the past week. So I thought: what better way to end off my week than to share my top five quotes from the show? So, here they are…
That Zack Morris Swagger
Posted in commentary, Nostalgia, tagged 1980s, nostalgia, saved by the bell, tv show on August 10, 2017| Leave a Comment »
But the ones who were always there for me were those on the small screen, where I could find them once a week when I needed them. Stars from shows like Who’s the Boss, Family Ties, and The Cosby Show showed me exactly what I needed to do, how I should behave, and what advice to follow so I could be a well-rounded human being. And they all did it in just a half hour every week.
The best part was that they weren’t real, but they were at the same time. I could imagine how it would be if I was friends with them, yet I never had to deal with their rejection. I could look up to them, but also judge them from afar, because they were royalty in a kingdom I would never visit.
I really wanted to be Zack Morris (and not just because of his bitchin’ cell phone either). He could stop time at any point and offer commentary on his fellow characters. He had amazing blonde hair. He was the cool kid without being too cool, because he made a ton of mistakes and was forced to grow as a character in order to fix them. And the best thing about Zack Morris was the glint in his eye when he had just come up with one of his dastardly plans.
Zack was the king of the swagger, and to a pubescent boy in the late ’80s it was easy to try and imitate that. There was nothing Zack couldn’t do, no lengths to which Zack wouldn’t go, in order to get what he wanted. And yet he was still likeable. Yet he still had a group of friends who were loyal to him even after he had humiliated each and everyone of them at some point. He was redeemable because he was real, because his swagger didn’t make him a villain.
It made him one of us.
Sam
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