THE DAY AFTER MONDAY is a once a week missive in which ‘80s through 90s hold-over Tim Blevins misses the point in all this pointlessness.
It’s hard to write this post with an episode of ”Caroline In The City” playing in the background.
Its from season three, which is discernible by the hairstyle of Caroline’s Best Friend Who Is In Cats. As this friend enters the apartment, her first line is greeted by a sarcastic retort from that Actor Who is Not Chris Eigeman from The Last Days Of Disco. After that the Guy Who Use To Date Caroline also enters with some sort of news that a local congressman wants to use one of Caroline’s comic strips in his campaign (Caroline is a cartoonist whose character is legally denied access to the phrase “Ack."). He thinks its a great marketing opportunity (I guess the Guy Who Use To Date Caroline also WORKS for Caroline?) and, given situational expectation, I imagine Caroline disagrees with the guy’s politics in the 22 minutes that ensue.
So, with that as the synopsis, it can’t be the plot that’s distracting me. Could it be the audio? Caroline’s Friend Who Is In Cats DID just make a Helen Keller joke that activated an e-meter of laughter from the studio audience. And the constant transitional music is mainly recycled cues from a mid-90s AT&T ad so … you know … a lot of keyboard. But those ear-worms are exactly the reason I CHOSE Caroline In the City in the first place. Its enough of a white noise machine to keep me focused. So why is it failing today?
Well, I think the answer to that can be found in the previously mentioned dialogue that opened the scene, transcribed below without stage dressing:
————
FADE IN:
INT. CAROLINE’S APARTMENT - DAY
CAROLINE and ACTOR WHO IS NOT CHRIS EIGEMAN are seated on either sides of their work desk cartooning. The front door opens as CAROLINE’S BEST FRIEND WHO IS IN CATS enters.
CAROLINE’S BEST FRIEND WHO IS IN CATS
Hey guys, guess who just showed up on my doorstep?
ACTOR WHO IS NOT CHRIS EIGEMAN
The Center For Disease Control.
———-
It got a laugh. From a 90s audience. Possibly hocked up on the lingering fumes of a heated Krimper. But today, with my feet on a futon to support modern technology, that line is like a Google alert. A flashing Chyron. The emoji equivalent of sandwich board declaring the end is near. That simple throw-away line from the closing moments of the 20th Century now holds the same deathly hallow as my current Twitter feed.
This reference to the CDC can only remind me that there’s a pandemic darkly terraforming our day to day existence. And I know you know that, so I don’t need to go into some pop culture allusion to Outbreak or the Legacy virus as a way of … I don’t know … selfishly dealing with my own issues. What I am referencing, I guess, is that those sort of references (to movies and comics) are no longer the escape plan I had hoped for. Pop culture as a whole may not be up to the current burden of reprieve.
I remember watching New York get attacked. I remember sheltering in place after the Boston Marathon Bombing. And I remember streaming the pilot episode of The Paul Reiser Show. These events came with an uncertainty, and that uncertainty nudged fear toward how would it all play out.
And look, I know the fallout of mass infection is larger than my inability to get lost in Lea Thompson’s filmography (although similar to getting through all 97 minutes of Casual Sex?). Its just certain pop culture has always been there as a comfort for me. Anything But Love reruns and the cast recording of Rent have eased me through zip code transitions, dramatic break-ups and family mortality. And right now I’m at a total loss toward how to process our current uncertainty. So, it would have been nice if binge watching this Must Have Seen TV staple could have been a proper distraction.
Now it still might be too early for the “society won’t be the same” business card I’m workshopping at Vista Print, but there is this pertinent question of how to cope. I mean, I want to loose myself, in TV and with this blog and all the ongoing podcast projects I originally planned to reference here. And I’ll push through and try, to create the things I like and watch the things I love. But they’re not going to work as background noise and they’re not going to be the ink that blots out the current world situation.
What they are going to be are just activities and endeavors that I do. That I’ll keep doing. And they are going to trigger thoughts, and reference anxieties and overall reflect the fact that I don’t know what to make of this situation as I’ve never lived through something like this before.
The sole, positive take away from all this (if I had to force one) is that maybe art is never just background noise. People’s creative pursuits, be they a Caroline in The City teleplay or the hours of recording I deem a podcast, are worth engaging with. Paying attention to. And, in the most personal approach to it, they are still worth doing. So I’ll keep recording my show’s dialogues and I’ll keep posting these poorly spell-checkied missives and along the way I will check my temperature and question every cough. These are not normal times. So why not embrace thee abnormality of art?
Wow, left untended, this CBS All Access app cycles through Caroline In The City’s full run like a maudlin Moebius strip.
sigh-
Tim
Tim is Tim Blevins, co-host of 20TH CENTURY POP! and a few other upcoming podcasts. He wishes Chris Eigman had been cast as either of the two guys from Two Guys, A Girl And A Pizza Place.
On this Thursday’s 20TH CENTURY POP! it’s a Glorified Rerun from 2017 that finds Bob confessing his fandom for a cult tv show he may have inadvertently got cancelled. It’s a binge and podcast of three episodes from the ‘80s one hit wonder MISFITS OF SCIENCE.
You can stream this bonus episode of 20TH CENTURY POP Thursday at 20POPCAST.COM or, even better, subscribe to the show on APPLE PODCASTS, STITCHER and other ANDROID DEVICES.
You can also check out his upcoming 5 day a week deep dive into the discography of the Replacements with the official SHOW TRAILER FOR WHAT’S THAT SONG?.
Talk to TIM BLEVINS on TWITTER @subcultist
See what he’s seeing on INSTAGRAM @subcultist
Subscribe to his podcast 20TH CENTURY POP! (with co-host BOB CANNING) on APPLE PODCASTS, STITCHER and ANDROID.
Then follow them on TWITTER @20popcast and on INSTAGRAM @20popcast