God's Wide Screen and My Phillips

Had to run some out of town errands with my husband and the day was ripe and gold to red, the sky perfect blue, and the breeze, well, heavenly.   Off we went to make the most of it.  Plenty of entertainment just in watching the majesty of trees turning in the colors of autumn.  Sunlight will be scarce in the coming months and there will be plenty of time for me to become a Screen Mole again soon. 

Still, I made a commitment to myself to keep up with my writing daily, so here I am.  If you break promises to yourself, you can't be counted on to keep promises to anyone, right?

I did catch one re-run while I was doing some research and getting ready to update my blogs that reminds me of one of the things I love best about television.

Say what you will about the Sit-Com, it is one of the bread and butter elements of the medium for obvious reasons.  Who doesn't like to sit back after a hard day and laugh at someone who just went through something very similar to what we went through?

But Sit-Coms have a wide range from the sublime, to just, well, slime.  'That 70's Show' is one of those comedies that were so well made, so down to earth, so very relatable, that I can never get enough of it.  I think I have a fairly healthy sense of humor, but few things make me actually laugh out-loud.  This show does.

The cast was spectacular of course, every single one of them, but it was the characters that made it work.  One of the things that stands out about the writing is that while it doesn't take itself too seriously in the least, it captures the issues that were relevant in the 70's and are relevant today beautifully and in a balanced manner.  There are a bunch of characters but no real caricatures.  Each character has depth of soul that pervades the show, no matter how superficial their 'cover' personality may be.  In Erik's basement (which I think is a great analogy for the sub-conscious) all of our fears, our quirks, our failings and our greatness come to life.

There are no malicious hidden agendas to this show, it is genuine and genuinely entertaining.  It shows us that we don't have to be perfect.  That being perfectly human is good enough.  God I miss it.  Bring it back.  Just kidding.  Adolescence doesn't last forever and the characters would grow stale on us as they became older and perhaps a bit more jaded.  But more shows like this should be written.  We should encourage this type of down-to-earth humor in our hours of television viewing.

Compare this show to other Sit-Coms that came before and since, and there is a market gap there.  Put writer/producers Bonnie and Terry Turner and writer Mark Brazill back to the old drawing board!  We need more of this on our Boob-Tube. (Fez blushes and laughs 'Boob!').