When I was a kid, sick days were full of apple juice, ginger ale, chicken soup, repeated VCR viewings of Smokey and the Bandit, Ultra Man and Bugs Bunny reruns on Channel 50, General Hospital on Channel 7, and - if the gods and Channel 20 conspired - Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot. These days were hugely satisfying: drifting in and out of sleep, I’d wake up to find Burt Reynolds flying over a gap in his Trans Am, Luke and Laura Spencer adjusting to life as a married couple, Daffy Duck screaming, “Shoot Me Now!! Shoot Me Now!!,” Shin Hyata raising his arm, beeper in hand, to transform into the giant, arm-crossing robot, or Bobbie Byers telling Giant Robot to unleash the force of his bullet-tipped fingers to bring down yet another monster. This sick-time viewing mimicked my recovery: the early days were a fever dream of disparate images which eventually gave way to the punch and clarity of entire episodes and movies. The journey to health was complete when I could recite the entirety of Smokey and the Bandit line-for-line, inflection-for inflection.
Last week my son Connor spent four school days and three weekend days at home with an Upper Respiratory infection. His fever lasted for five days, his cough lasted longer and he was less than his normally energetic self. So of course I let him watch a bunch of TV. My son’s tastes are somewhat similar but mostly different from my four-year-old self: he doesn’t like soap operas but he does like robots. He doesn’t like Burt Reynolds but he will. Oh, yes, he will learn to LOVE Burt Reynolds and his Trans Am. To his credit, he doesn’t have parents who let him watch wildly inappropriate things for his age. My parents let me watch this when I was six. They let me watch this when I was seven. And my Dad took my brother and me to see this when we were 10 and eight, respectively.
Despite his low energy, he was an attentive spectator. He call-and-responded to Blaze and His Monster Machines engineering solutions. He laughed at Marshall, his favorite Paw Patrol pup. He got bored, played with Magnatiles, drew in a coloring book, painted at the kitchen table and then went back to the TV and danced to the Octonauts’ Creature Reports.
What surprised me most was that he flippin’ LOVED my least favorite Pixar movie, Cars. He watched the movie one and a half times a day, and each moment was a kind of torture because I always get caught up in not understanding the world of this movie. I won’t go into too much detail but every one of the characters is a car and one character has a garage full of binders, bookshelves, and pictures hanging on his walls. The movie never shows how the cars have the dexterity to assemble these binders and bookshelves, or hammer the nail that would allow those pictures to hang. So I spend large chunks of the movie lost in the how of its world rather than losing myself in the story it has to tell.
I pick at movies this way because I’ve seen so many of them. I enjoy thinking about how they work and get great satisfaction in figuring out why particular movies and tv shows affect me the way they do. This engagement gives me an appreciation for how they work; and, honestly, it makes me feel smart. What’s sad though is the realization that over the course of my life, I’ve come to value the experience of watching movies and television more the things themselves.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with this. Taking things apart is how you understand them. And taking your criticisms to your own work and behavior goes a long way toward understanding yourself. But I strongly identify with the food critic Anton Egon from the movie Ratatouille, who states:
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.
This is why I used to love watching anything: because they presented worlds and possibilities that felt far from mine and opened a door into the world that I didn’t even realize had been constructed. Picking movies apart has sucked some of the joy out of why I initially loved them and losing that joy makes me sad.
You know who doesn’t have that problem? Connor. He loves this movie and as much as I have a difficult time looking past its inconsistencies, I love watching it with him. I love how he laughs at the tractor tipping scene. I love how he says, “Lighting McQueen! Lighting McQueen!” I love when he asks me why Lightning McQueen is alone. And I LOVE the way he smiles knowingly at me when my favorite scene approaches. (Skip ahead to 1:43) I’m sad that I no longer get the same unfiltered joy out of movies but watching them with him makes for a pretty rich and satisfying experience.
Connor’s better now. He watches significantly less TV. He still asks for Cars but not as often. When he does though, I’ll sit next to him when and try not to pick it apart. I usually fail because that’s the way I’m wired. But he’ll lean against me or laugh or get bored and move onto something else and I’ll remember where I am and who I’m with. And then I’ll stop picking and try to enjoy the moment.
