And An Argument for Basic Cable I Never Thought I Would Make
If you haven’t watched HGTV in a while, don’t worry, nothing has changed.
This is because HGTV exists outside of time, the light jazz of basic cable, it carries on without concern or care beyond, “fix this house”, or “buy one of these houses”, or “chose to fix this house or buy one of these houses”.
Its carefree content is extremely privileged in that way, and we need that mindless privilege now more than ever.
Life Is Stressful
It’s the night of my cousins wedding.
A Polish community center located outside of Milwaukee, WI, lights dimmed after dinner, young people filling it’s dance floor, where the DJs, who switched between English and Spanish throughout the reception proceedings, are now comfortably using the tu form with us.
At the packed bar I sit-stand on a stool, the awkward way people sit-stand on stools, next to my cousin who is a literal space engineer and designed a part on one of the Mars rovers.
[One of the Mars rovers. I am too dumb to remember which Mars rover my very smart cousin worked on. There’s like 4 Mars rovers (I had to fact check that) and I don’t know which one it is].
Our entire family is talking the way you can have one conversation all night long, no matter the members of the group you are having with, one that weaves in between the semi-circles it creates, ebbing and flowing like so much Miller High Life and Fireball.
At some point the topic of mindless television arises.
I mention how, the older I get the more mindless television I need to consume, and how I now understand my dad’s binge watching of Law & Order: SVU.
“I feel like the older you get the more you just need TV that you can entirely turn your brain off for”.
The space engineer chuckles and agrees.
The night goes on, the pastel lights flying around the large ballroom, a crowd of young people, celebrating love, dancing with all the energy pierogis, and light Wisconsin lager, have to provide.
A Couple Charts Regarding Cable Television
While HGTV is it’s pinnacle of airheadedness, basic cable offers some very, now underrated, mind-numbing properties.
Mindless Need = Age * Trauma
Everyone’s life can be charted by how mindless they need their television to be.
When you’re young, your parents (if you’re lucky) force you to watch mind-filling television like Sesame Street.
As time goes on, more bad things happen. Some of them are so intense we call them traumatic.
As a young 20 something male you pride yourself on the edgy, dense and dark dramas you consume (The Wire, Sopranos, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones).
These shows are great but can leave you feeling tense or dreadful.
By the time you get to about 30 and life really kicks you in the energy dick, your need for mindlessness bounces back to the trajectory it was on in its teenage years.
Why Basic Cable + HGTV = Xanax
Everyone’s life can also be charted on an axis of “times when they had cable and times when they didn’t”.
Mine looks like this.
I was part of the first wave of cord cutters, but I’ve found that live television provides two vital services that streaming will never be able to.
1. You can watch something without choosing anything
You just got home from the mess that is your job-all-day, then traffic, then the Chipotle line. You have your Chipotle right in front of you. You just want to eat and watch.
But, no.
You only have streaming services and you forgot to figure out what you were going to watch when you got home by thinking about it all day.
You now have to figure out what you want to watch, get to that service, select that show…by the time you do all that you’re half-way through your burrito bowl, your day’s reward now blunted by frustration and disappointment.
Sitting down on the couch, pressing a button and having TV just start televisioning at you is an underrated benefit of corded television.
It is a benefit that went completely overlooked, derided, and taken for granted for decades.
2. You are sharing the experience.
Just like listening to the radio, watching live television has the added benefit of being a shared experience.
Watching TV all alone feels even lonelier when you know you’re the only one watching that exact Netflix show at that exact time.
Even commercials on live television give you a chance to get something done, or go to the bathroom.
Both the shared experience aspect, and the fact you can plop down on a hotel bed, turn on the TV, and not move for hours, are the launching elements, the rocket fuel if you will, for HGTV’s rocket: they get you off the ground, out of the pull of gravity, and once there, HGTV cruises you right on through to orbit.
A Brief Aside for Some Random Thoughts on HGTV
Do I trust the on-air relationship between Love It or List It‘s hosts, the 4-named David Scott Michael Visentin and the 2-named Amy Farr?
With their forced-conflict banter, whose only tense quality is how forced it feels?
Or that either of the hosts are really that confrontational or irritable in real life?
I do not.
Is Amy Farr gonna find a lot of leaks and water in your walls you didn’t know you had?
You know she is.
Do I think the host of My Lottery Dreamhome changed a LOT since the show started?
I really do.
Do I believe that people on House Hunters buy a house, and then go on the show where they’re forced to fake-hem-and-fake-haw their way into choosing the house they already live in?
Yes.
Now, More Than Before
If Mindlessness Need is based on compounded life traumas experienced by the viewer, multiplied by how long they’ve been alive, then we are all adding a layer of trauma to our collective need for entertainment unburdened by the world’s problems.
I’ve always watched too much MSNBC and CNN. And filled the time in between cable news with hours of NPR, political podcasts, and headline scrolling.
I don’t do any of that these days.
I’m privileged enough to ignore the world’s problems, yes, to a certain extent.
But I’m also so incredibly angry at my President’s lack of invocation of the National Defense Production Act…
…so helpless to stop 43,000 millionaires from receiving 82% of the $2.2tn Coronavirus stimulus payments (that payment that pays most Americans $1,200) at an average of $1.7 million per millionaire…
“82 per cent of the benefits of the policy go to about 43,000 taxpayers who earn more than $1m annually”.
…so completely devastated at the sites of trenches being dug in New York…
…so beyond words with people protesting the stay-at-home orders, issued by Governors trying to keep their people safe…
…so saddened at the frontline staff who don’t have enough medical supplies in a country where, instead of paying companies to keep their staff like most of Europe is doing, has allowed 22 million of its workers to lose their job in the last month (and that’s just the people applying for unemployment) and it’s businesses to be shuttered…
…that I no longer watch the news, or listen to it.
I wake up everyday in a world that very profoundly reminds me that I have no control over it.
At least while I watch HGTV, that lack of control – over whatever HGTV has pre-recorded and decided to play at any given time slot – feels like a choice.