my tv education

I can’t decide if I grew up in the 70’s or the 80’s. Hell, I don’t think I’ve actually “grown up” even today since I still can’t tell you what I want to be when I grow up. I keep putting it off thinking someday I’ll figure it out.

I guess if I was forced, I would say I was a child of the 70’s, or rather a child of 70’s TV shows.

I recall in the 8th grade watching one of my favorite shows, Welcome Back Kotter. Since I was just a year away from high school I thought it would be just like that. I thought you would be in a class where everyone was your friend, even that snotty little bitch Judy. Your teacher would be cool and have a big afro and I could wear a denim jacket and my buddy Epstein would teach me how to write a note from my mom to get me out of anything.

That proved to be incorrect. But to the frustration of many of my teachers I tried like hell. Up your nose with a rubber hose.

The Love Boat also proved to be my undoing, but it took almost 25 years for it to hit. It wasn’t until I went on a cruise with my wife and a few of our friends several years ago. Apparently my wife didn’t watch as much of it as I did cause my 14 year old mind thought a cruise literally meant… the Love Boat. I admit I also thought we would get all dressed up and attend a dinner were we would sit with the captain and his daughter and when we watched the sunset from the side of ship the breeze would slightly blow our hair.

Damn you Captain Stubing. Damn you to hell.

Everything I know about police I learned from Barney Miller and Starsky and Hutch. But the ultimate police show was Adam-12. To this day when I see an LAPD cop on some car chase or a video beating someone I think they are either Pete or Jim out on patrol. Only they would have the case wrapped up in 30 minutes and the guilty would go down and justice would reign.

I thought I would grow up and live in an apartment building like Three’s Company. I didn’t see myself lucking out and actually living with 2 foxy chicks (I still love saying “foxy”), but I would live near them and we would hang out at the Regal Beagle with our bell bottoms, feathered hair and shirts with huge collars. I would be Jack's wingman.

The Brady Bunch taught me that the cute girl with the long golden hair will break your heart in the end and her sisters would just laugh at you if you showed up at the door on your Evil Knievel bike with the fake gas tank. Damn you Marsha, I really thought we had something.

WKRP in Cincinnati tought me that the boss is usually clueless and thats ok. I also learned that even though the really hot (sorry... foxy) chick named Jennifer sitting at the front desk is the one everyone checks out walking down the hall, the one true fox is actually Bailey and will always be.

The Dukes of Hazzard taught me that it's possible to jump a car across a 30 foot cavern from a construction site on one end and yell "yeeee haaawwww" while in midair. I never questioned if this was real. I figured if they could shoot a bow and arrow with TNT attached to it and blow crap up they could do anything. Damn you Bo Duke for making me wear my hair like that and thinking I could pull off the blue shirt unbuttoned down to there look. Good thing I never learned how to weld or my parents would have had a new door feature on the family car to go along with the scratches on the hood from me sliding across it.

There are so many other shows that shaped my view of the world in the late 70’s, but the final summary is this; the world wasn’t always clean, the people in general were cool or they could be written off, everyone would get a chance at a punch line and everything would work out in the end before the credits started rolling.

Now you can’t tell me that’s not a good education.