Musty Old TV

It would be easy enough to wax nostalgic here about how I used to watch TV. I have mentioned here previously that before the advent of remote controls, we sometimes watched whatever came on the box sitting across the room from us. Then, upon the discovery my first remote, my little brother, I could be more discerning with my tastes. Or more scattered at least. It took me a while to understand that most broadcast stations had commercial breaks scheduled each quarter hour. That meant every fifteen minutes I was commanding my little brother to twist the dial around to check out our alternatives, only to discover that we were watching ads at each stop. This brought on a new sense of complacency, one that was never felt more keenly than Thursday nights.
There was a time when there was such a thing as "Must See TV." The National Broadcasting Company may not have invented it, but they surely made a big deal about it in the 1990's. What else were you going to do on a Thursday night? You had to be at work or school the next day, so you weren't going out to whoop it up, necessarily. Why not find that comfy spot on the couch and settle in for some quality comedy and maybe an hour of drama to top it off? In the early days of my marriage, it was the sure thing we could turn to, without having to worry about a remote control. We were watching "Must See TV." Appointment TV. TV that you needed to have watched in order to have cogent conversation around the water cooler the following day.
I used to look forward to Thursday nights. Mostly for "Friends" and "Mad About You," but before that there was "Cheers," and eventually "Frasier." For a while we had us some "Seinfeld"and I admit that I used to keep track of the sweaters Cliff Huxtable wore, but that was indeed another time. I used to avoid making plans with people, much to my new wife's chagrin, just so I could keep track of all the goings-on in what was invariably an East Coast setting, laugh track included. She didn't have much of a leg to stand on, since she was as invested in the trials and tribulations found in and out of the emergency room of Chicago's County General Hospital. Maybe Doctor Ross could have helped her with that unipod stance. She wishes.
Just like I wish that I could still get that "Friday Eve" feeling when dinner was over and it was time to go warm up the tube. It will be waiting there on the DVR when I get around to binge watching the entire series run of this or that show, but not on NBC. Not this year. For the first time in more than thirty-three years, the Peacock did not air a single sit-com in its Thursday night lineup. Three hours of drama. Drama that I may or may not see, but I do miss that compulsory television. What I'm doing now just seems so arbitrary.