I don't watch regular TV anymore. When a show comes up in conversation, I have nothing to add because I know nothing of the characters or story. Whenever something is described to me, nothing raises my interest in it. Instead, I watch episodes of older programs. I have binge-watched Rosanne and both the original and TNG Star Treks.
My latest fancy has been Macgyver. Not the new one, of course, but the original show that ran in the 80s and 90s. Strange choice for me, considering I never watched it in the 80s and just wasn't my kind of show, but I find it therapeutic.
You see, I watched it for a short while in the 90s. It wasn't my choice to do so at first, but it was a show that my first husband liked, therefore, we watched it. I have mentioned before that he wasn't a very nice guy. In fact, he still gives me nightmares. So, we watched what he liked, if you see what I mean. After a while, I did grow to like it. It was fun watching the genius ways our hero would turn ordinary objects into inventive 007 works of art to get out of any situation. I'm rather proud to say that I tend to fix things and invent solutions with the basic everyday stuff around me and it was cool to see someone else do it on a James Bond level.
Pretty soon, I started pointing out flaws in Macgyver's inventions, such as how the odds were against things lining up so perfectly, or he would have needed more of this, or less of that, in order for things to work the way that they did. Nightmare didn't like me doing that. Perhaps he took it personally that I was finding flaws in a show he liked. Yes, he's that petty. Or maybe he was mad that I saw things that he didn't because he thought it made him look stupid. Yes, he has a way of twisting things like that and making the world seem like a conspiracy against him. Or perhaps I was simply being annoying, blurting obvious things out, during most spell-bounding scenes. Yes, I can see the other side of this too. But, whatever the reason, he went ugly.
Whenever I displeased him (and this happened frequently) he would get very angry and use everything in his power to hurt me to the core. Whenever this happened, whatever was giving me happiness at the time would become poisoned to me and I couldn't enjoy it anymore. I don't remember the argument, or the scene that took place (much of my life during that time is still blocked from my memory,) but in the end, I no longer wanted to watch Macgyver. When it came on, I would find something else to do. If Nightmare insisted that I watch it with him, I would sit with him and tune out the world around me. It just wasn't safe for me to watch anymore.
So, back to present time, after exhausting Rosanne episodes for the third time, I was scrolling through Amazon Prime for something new/old (meaning new for me but old for the rest of the world.) As you probably predicted, Macgyver popped up. It was still something that wouldn't have sparked my interest, even without the poison, but now it flashed out a familiar twinge of that old fear that likes to pop up from time to time, even though Nightmare is long out of my life. After looking at it a bit, I thought, "Go to hell, twinge, I'm going to watch it, enjoy it, say what I want and debunk whatever I want, and HE WON'T HURT ME!
I'm on season four now and enjoying it thoroughly! Yes, the whole thing is cheesy, and I can say so without the back of my head getting slapped, and I enjoy the freedom of expression my opinions to myself during the show and here on this forum. I love the campy 80s feel with its predictable story-lines, bad foreign accents (they have two of these, European and Asian, and sometimes sound as if the actors get the two confused,) bad-guy and good-guy music, scripts that seem to come straight out of the after-school-special reject pile, theme music that was likely made from a single synthesizer in one afternoon, and the fancy slow-motion-running-away-from-explosions move.
What I also like is that it is nothing like today's television shows. Violence is minimal, and touches of innuendo are... just that. It's just a story and all the cheese the producers could pull together to make it into an exciting one.
One example of this was a scene where a dog was murdered. The murderer pulled out a knife, said something that implied the intentions, and then things were cut to the next scene where it was verbally confirmed that the dog was killed. Had that scene been made today, there would have been a stabbing scene, blood, a terrible cry from the dog, a shot of a carcass, and possibly a lingering scene with someone with a carcass fetish, and all of that would have been completely unnecessary.
Also, no, I will not be watching the new Macgyver episodes that came out this year. The innocent charm of 80s TV shows is sure to be absent. I would rather preserve my feelings for the original show by not muddying my mind with images of the "new" version. To those who do enjoy it, more power to them, by all means, enjoy it. It will simply be another show people can talk about in my presence and I would have nothing constructive to contribute.
I suppose it is another example that I have healed, not only in my walk in life away from Nightmare, but hurt that I have carried around in the further past concerning the Church, such as stuff from my childhood. Much has happened to me since last September in Medjugorje, giving me the strength to let go of a lot of the hurt. The healing has come in many ways, from many angles, since Mary, the Queen of Peace, has reached out to me. She has used Duran Duran to reach me. Could she be using Macgyver too?
I am enjoying Macgyver on a surface level, which is pretty much all that it was designed for. At the same time, watching it is an achievement for me; a victory even. I am moving forward in my life, farther away from the nightmares of my past.
All I need are all the basic everyday objects around me to get there...
No comments:
Post a Comment