The Honest Courtesan

One of the things Grace and I have always enjoyed is watching TV shows, usually science fiction or fantasy, together.  And over the past three years we’ve established a pattern: about ten PM we each prepare a snack – I a cup of tea and a little dessert, and she a bowl of soup – and take some edibles to relax, and then we watch a couple of episodes of whatever show we’re doing at the moment.  Over the past few years we’ve watched or re-watched Doctor Who, Farscape, Deep Space Nine, Space: 1999, Blake’s 7, Babylon 5, Mission: Impossible, The Wild, Wild West, Enterprise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Star Trek, and currently The Six Million Dollar Man, plus a number of shorter series we knocked out in a week or less.  Some of these I first saw as an adult, but others (like our current show) I haven’t seen since they first aired when I was much younger, and those are the ones I’m finding most interesting.  It’s hardly incisive criticism or inspired analysis to point out that children see and enjoy different things in a movie or show than adults do, or that young adults and older adults may enjoy different things about the same show.  But what’s fascinating is that ofttimes it’s almost like watching a different show.  Even as a young lass I enjoyed watching good characters, though obviously I lacked an adult’s ability to appreciate the nuances of character development and interaction, and of course a lot of the subtler jokes and dialogue flew right over my head.  But for the most part, it was the ideas in these shows which ignited my imagination.  Even when I watch shows I haven’t seen in the neighborhood of half a century, I still clearly recall some plot points, characters, terminology, and even exact lines or phrases.  Yet there are other bits I don’t remember at all despite their really grabbing my attention in our current viewing.  Sometimes that means rolling my eyes at things I thought were really cool when I was ten, but sometimes it means gaining a new, adult appreciation of a childhood favorite.