Love Your Television

Marilyn Munster and our author: loved but strange

Completely bummed was my reaction upon reading Margaret Moser's farewell at the end of "TV Eye" last week. Her trips through TV land were trips I took with her. What would I do without Moser's TV Eye? How would I navigate that surprising, maddening, and sometimes brilliant medium called television? Then I remembered: I'm the new "TV Eye" writer. It's now on me to make "TV Eye" as appealing as Moser did. While that brings anticipation it also fills me with dread. Can I measure up to Moser? Will the cartoon junkies dig me? Should I care? Will I remember references to all those award shows gone by or episodes of Xena?

On a visit to the Chronicle to plow through "TV Eye" mail, "Film" editor Marjorie Baumgartenintroduced me to a person who hosts his own public-access show. Upon being told I was taking over the column, he asked, "Why?" I thought it was a jovially smart-assed question, and as good a place as any to start off this, my first "TV Eye" column.

Why did I agree to write "TV Eye"? I watch TV. Not that I'm the ideal TV doyenne. There are strange gaps in my TV viewing. For example, I have yet to see a single episode of Twin Peaks, though I was completely absorbed by Northern Exposure, often cited as Peaks' more benign cousin.

The great thing is that now that I get to watch and write about TV for publication, I can come out of the closet and into the bright, electric glow of the tube. As a former MFA student in the Texas Center for Writers' Program at the University of Texas, television was not exactly considered one of the "fine" arts, though you could pass for "hip" if you aspired to write something like My So-Called Life. When I let it slip one day that I was an avid Rescue 911 viewer, my writing professor looked at me as if I'd admitted to mowing over little kitten heads. Still, uttering the words "I watch Rescue 911" as freely as "I read The New Yorker" brought me to my true self. Smirk if you will at the cheesy reenactments, the painfully corseted William Shatner, and the melodramatic theme song, but who doesn't want to know how Aunt Martha survived that marlin attack, or how little Billy got that dang toothbrush unstuck from his ear? A quartet of short, first-person stories, told by people using their own words,was the hallmark of Rescue 911. But I digress ...

In my deeply closeted days, I almost bought one of those "Kill Your Television" bumper stickers, but I came to my senses. Who was I trying to fool? The truth of the matter is, I am profoundly shaped as a writer and as a person by television. It shaped my view of the world and of my place in it. That's not to say it was all positive. There was a certain measure of disequilibrium, too. Seeing stereotyped images of Mexicans and other Latinos, or worse, no images at all, didn't do much for my racial or ethnic identity. On the other hand, like many writers of color who turn to literature because a work universally spoke to their experience, I say that TV worked in a similar way for me. There's a reason that I felt an affinity for Marilyn Munster (of The Munsters). Like Marilyn, I was loved but considered unfortunately strange. My family was like the Munsters. We weren't the only brown folks in Lincoln, Nebraska, but it sometimes felt like it. Who needed to drive a souped-up hearse when all you had to do was ride in a late-model Chevy with your Mexican aunt and uncle, mom, brother, and cousins? If only we rode in a low-rider, it would complete the analogy.

Another show I found solace in was Green Acres, the first postmodern television sitcom. I loved Green Acres because of its eye-winking reflexivity and thought. It was a hoot how this prototypical white male placed himself in an Alice in Wonderland of absurd "bumpkins" who usually got the best of him, and where a pig was the intellectual giant of the land. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, describes Green Acres as "the story of Oliver Douglas in hell." Depending on how the week went, I either identified with Oliver Douglas or Arnold the pig.

Sitcoms were not the only programs to influence me. Some of the most profound events of the century occurred during my early life and were carried to the world on television. The John and Robert Kennedy assassinations, Martin Luther King's assassination, the first landing on the moon, Watergate, and many Olympic games. The point is, I found something immediate and dynamic in television as a young viewer and continue to search for it today. It's not a perfect medium, and there is plenty of pap out there, but as pervasive as it is, it's silly to ignore it. I roll my eyes deep into the back of my head when someone proclaims to me, "I don't watch television." Really? And how long have you been living under that rock?

What can you expect to find during my tenure with "TV Eye"? Here's a hint of what shapes my knowledge and interest in the medium: almost any series from the King (Norman) Lear era, Rocky and Bullwinkle (though I'm no expert), Captain Kangaroo, early The Young and the Restless, variety shows too numerous to mention, and award shows -- namely the Academy Awards, the Emmys, the Tonys, and the Grammys, in that order.

More recent favorites include emergency-themed programs like Rescue 911, though I'm not into the current Fox offerings of "when farm dogs attack" and the like. After Rescue 911, everything went downhill, if you ask me. I like some talk shows -- the Tom Green Show andLate Night With Conan O'Brien come to mind, and I loved Arsenio Hall's show, blemishes and all, before it got canned. I came to The X-Files late but now watch it as faithfully as I do ER, and for some strange reason, Ally McBeal. Daytime talk shows I can take or leave, except Jerry Springer, whom I loathe. Favorite networks include the Learning Channel, Food Network, Bravo, Fox, Nickelodeon's TV Land, NBC, and whatever else catches my interest when cruising through the dial.

If that captures your interest, glad to please. If not, get in touch with me and let me know what I'm missing.