Friday, August 2, 2013

The Heart of the Matter

We all need a little tenderness, how can love survive in such a graceless age? -Don Henley

We dropped "Eureka" from our instant queue.

We love our Roku box. Netflix is our favorite channel. It is well worth the $7.99 a month to know that we will never watch a commercial about male or female personal products. Or see a semi-naked woman making love to her hamburger.

"Eureka" didn't have any of that stuff. Language was very mild. Just a quirky little show about quirky little people in a quirky little town.

But over the course of watching 17 episodes, a disturbing pattern emerged. More and more, the humor seemed based on what I would consider "hateful" behavior if I encountered it personally.

That is not to say that my friends don't rag on me pretty hard sometimes (and I on them). I can take it.

I'm sure you can distinguish between good-natured teasing and mean-spirited snarkiness.

The snarky (I'm pretty sure that's a word) thing began to predominate on "Eureka;" interspersed with generous helpings of selfish whining. Yuk.

Isn't humor supposed to be based on the observation of the absurd (ludicrous, ridiculous, eccentric, bizarre and yes, I'm balancing the thesaurus on one knee as I type, which is all the things mentioned above and hopefully therefore humorous)?

Maybe the there is a direct connection between the gracelessness Don Henley noticed and what passes for humor these days.

Not in my circle, however. All my friends are falling-down funny and possess offbeat, if not outright bizarre, senses of humor.

How could they put up with ME otherwise?

No comments:

Post a Comment