Winter (TV) is coming...
If think you’ve been watching a lot of TV since the pandemic hit, you haven’t seen nothing yet.
Here in RVA (that’s Richmond, VA to those of you not lucky enough to live in the new restaurant capital of the South), we’ve had an exceptionally warm autumn but, as they say in that show about dragons and beheadings…
Winter is coming.
Which is why, after a month of painstaking planning for a lunch with four old friends of mine, instead today I’ll be eating lunch at my desk in the attic. The high today will be 40 degrees with 15 mph winds, and there isn’t a restaurant patio heater in RVA that can keep your flakey biscuits warm in that weather.
(Eat inside the restaurant you say? HA! We’re not that stupid.)
So, the colder weather is forcing us all away from outdoor dining and off pickleball courts, back into our homes.
At that point we will have the choice of:
Talking to each other… OR…
Watching one of the 4,000,000 amazing television shows that are just two excessively complicated remote controls away.
You can pretend differently on your Facebook feed, but we all know which you’re choosing.
To celebrate the return of obsessive TV season, I present you with this alarmingly fervent rant about TV and, in particular, historical dramas.
Stacy and I tend to watch a handful of different genres: either dramedies about modern life, British detective shows, or historical dramas. You can immediately tell a historical drama, because there are women walking muddy streets in ornate, heel-length gowns.
How the hell did they clean those dresses? Seriously, show a little leg and save yourself hours of beating that dress on a rock down at the river.
It reminds me of the old Strawberry Hill Races, a Richmond springtime tradition of steeple chase (horses) and day drinking in a field (people). Thousands of women would get dressed to the nines only to look out the window and realize it had been raining for 72 straight hours. Would they change into sensible clothing? Hell no! This is the South and that was tradition, and those women were going to the races looking their best, even if it meant slogging all day through calf-deep mud in their high heels and bright spring outfits.
By the end of the day, the outfits were brown, at least one high heel was lost forever, and their boyfriends were down at Buddy’s in muddy khakis drinking with their fraternity brothers.
It was like we were living in the 1600s and, believe me, I’ve watched enough shows about living in the 1600s, and it’s no way to live. NO heat. NO real medical care. You had to KILL and SKIN and GUT and COOK EVERY THING you ate. (Spare me, hunters, I get it: you’re a real man. Now do it alone, in four feet of snow, and lug the 200 pounds of meat home on your back.) (Spare me, Lee, I get it: you actually are a real man.)
Living was tough back then, but not nearly as tough as dying. Based on these historical dramas, I’m pretty sure the leading cause of death prior to 1800 was slit throats. (Pro tip from olden times: once someone is dead, just move your hand slowly down the dead guy’s face and his eyes magically close.)
Life seemed so miserable from the dawn of man until, like, 70 years ago, it’s a wonder the species didn’t just collectively say, “screw it, this ain’t worth it” and end it all.
Of course, they wouldn’t say that out loud, though. Back then, everyone was too polite and proper to say what was really on their mind. Just tell your husband that it irritates the shit out of you when he drags a bloody elk carcass across the cabin and save us all an hour’s worth of misunderstanding and angst!
In those rare situations when they do tell each other what they’re thinking, they use three times as many words as necessary. I much prefer our modern efficiency in language. (This column notwithstanding.)
While the language in a lot of these shows about the olde times is not super-efficient, the screen writing can be. Many of the writers have developed shortcuts for keeping the action moving, like “the look.”
A main character comes across an antagonist who is accompanied by armed men. It might appear for a second like there’s gonna be a big swordfight or whatever. But then the antagonist wordlessly gives his men “the look,” and they all walk away. Now, I personally learned, in combat, which I saw on World War II shows that Stacy doesn’t watch with me, that good communication is critical during armed conflict, and one tenet of good communications is saying stuff out loud.
Another short cut is “the prayer scene,” which is the opposite of “the look.” If the screenwriter needs to move the plot along, he can’t have the characters just talk to each other, because that would violate Victorian-era etiquette. So, instead, a character prays.
Without fail, every forlorn Spanish princess or tortured noble prays out LOUD while alone in church, as if that’s the only way God can hear you. You know who else can hear you? The evil cardinal at the back of the sanctuary, that’s who.
Then there are the not-so-subtle plot hints. God help any character who sneezes or coughs – that’s a fatal case of consumption, right there, and I should know – I’m as much a medical expert as any doctor was before 1917.
And a woman who randomly places her hand on her belly or (if there is no time for finesse) suddenly vomits out the carriage window now has a one-in-three chance of not seeing the new year, because she’s definitely pregnant (huzzah!?).
Prior to the modern age, giving birth was akin to the worst torture imaginable (and still is no walk in the park today) and was a death sentence one out of three times. Yet whenever a woman missed her courses there was joy in the village. Seriously?
Why would women even want to have sex, given the potential outcome? This is not a rhetorical question. Considering the dangers of pregnancy, from an evolutionary standpoint it’s a mystery to me that women even have a sex drive. It’s an Darwinian horror story, like a breed of insect in which the female gives birth to propagate the species but dies in the process.
As you might guess, I voice all of these objections every time Stacy and I watch one of these shows and, as you might expect, Stacy is modern and efficient in her language regarding my opinions.
She’s not watching these shows to learn about 18th Century Scotland. She’s watching these shows to see muscle-bound men in kilts run through the misty Highlands without getting filthy and spend months fighting their way through the wilderness without a shower yet somehow come out smelling like an Irish Spring.
“Stacy,” I protest, “Look at his teeth! Brits today don’t have teeth that good!”
“Sweetie,” she replies (not actually saying “sweetie”), “If you think his teeth are why I can’t stop looking at him then you definitely don’t understand female sexuality.”
Of course (backing away slowly from female sexuality and evolutionary horror stories), I’m not saying I don’t like these shows – I do like these shows. Even when they run counter to my personal values.
For example, in Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister is not always nice to her brother, Jaime Lannister, and he is not always nice to her. Call me old fashioned, but that’s simply not how you treat family. Neither is that other thing they do.
OK, rant over…
Until I write my next rant, modern dramas…