TV or Not TV?

For me, one of the novelties of traveling and staying in a motel is watching TV, since Beth and I have whittled our viewing down over the years – and our options as well.

Once upon a time we were the typical cable household. Then about 20 years ago, when the local provider dropped the station for the baseball team we were following, we made the move to a big dish that enabled you to buy programming a la carte. Over the years we pared down our subscriptions to what we really watched – Comedy Central for The Daily Show, HBO or Showtime for movies – and as free feeds vanished we effectively removed ourselves from the channel-surfing subculture. When we pulled up stakes, we left the dish and a malfunctioning 30-inch TV behind.

Now we watch As Time Goes By reruns and FlashForward via antenna and access movies (occasionally) on DVD, all on a 19-inch monitor in the living room that otherwise rarely gets turned on. (Another one downstairs provides distraction for the Nordic Track.) I’m content to wait until the next day to get my Daily Show fix for free on-line. Used to watch network news from force of habit, but by the time it comes on I’ve already caught up on everything on the Internet so have broken free from that. For the most part, evenings are spent in that antiquated pastime known as “reading,” with accompaniment from satellite radio. If I want to watch something – I’ve been working my way through DVD sets of Seinfeld and MASH – I do so on my laptop.

So when the hotel in which we were staying for our Christmas trip featured a 32-inch LCD TV, my first reaction was “way cool!” Spent some time surfing to remind myself there were no cable offerings I particularly missed (and the aforementioned nonstop coverage of aborted terrorism was more than I could take), but enjoyed watching a couple of familiar movies on the larger screen. Maybe, thinks I, we should break down and get one of these, if only for a bigger view of the occasional flick. And so I did a little browsing on Amazon, which is enough to put you off purchasing nearly anything that has the potential to fail.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Amazon and value customer comments. But it seems like any product with enough reviews to provide a statistically reliable cross-section of opinion is going to have somebody trashing it. Comparing technical specifications of TVs is bad enough – what do I know from pixels or aspect ratios? – but when a handful of satisfied customers are offset by someone complaining about a product being DOA, buying anything becomes a crapshoot.

And so as I contemplated a TV that would in all probability get watched no more than it does now, along with the off-chance that the one I got would break down the day after the warranty expired, I finally said the hell with it. Maybe I’ll just sit closer to the one we have.

Flashing

I admit to not being terribly with it. I never heard the song (“Bad Day”) that’s being touted as the decade’s top one-hit wonder. I learned only about a month ago that there exists a performer named Lady Gaga. I don’t usually watch TV so didn’t follow Lost and have never seen American Idol. But I’ve gotten hooked on FlashForward.

In a nutshell: everybody passes out for 2 minutes & 17 seconds and sees six months into their future. The questions are: (1) whodunit (and why and how) and (2) do the visions show futures that must necessarily come to pass. It’s free will vs determinism for the boob tube. You got your global conspiracies, your quantum mechanics, and of course your human interest. By now you also got your web sites and forums. And after 10 episodes, you got total confusion that won’t be relieved until March, because the show’s just gone on hiatus (but now available in reruns (or online) for anyone who missed it). So no furtherance of confusion tonight.

The whole notion of seeing into the future is irresistible. Is it because we want to take measures against misfortune? Or comfort in the belief that, no matter how crummy things are now, they’re going to get better? On a deeper level, is it because we each have a self that seeks assurance of its own continuity? Or simply because we’re the one animal that knows it’s going to die – and are desperately afraid? (Does death even exist?) That, after all, is the basis of religion – and it’s curious that, thus far, FlashForward hasn’t had much to say about that.

Most precognition seems to come in the form of dreams, so it’s not inappropriate that this show focuses on dream-like experiences. Maybe while dreaming we tap into some non-linear comprehension of existence in which the future has already occurred. If so, does that send free will out the window? Or does it only seem that way because we’re trapped in our own linearity? Just because we haven’t experienced something yet in our current timeline doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened – or that we didn’t bring it about of our own free will.

Fittingly – or should I say teasingly – the last episode lived up to its real-time premise by providing nods to Dickens’ Christmas Carol, with Scrooge’s fear that the visions presented by the Ghost of Christmas Future must come to pass. Tiny Tim won’t necessarily die, and neither, perhaps, will Agent Noh. But only perhaps – we won’t know until March.