Breaking Badly

I know many of my Gentle Readers will be shocked to hear this, but - I have a confession.

I don't watch television.

Nine years ago, I got divorced.  As an undisputed item in the HIS column of the Marital Assets, I handed my ex the connubial television set with a sigh of utter relief.  Didn't even want to contest it.  You see, the ex was one of those people who had to have the television on at all times.  Otherwise, he got lonely.  I spent close to twenty years honing my skill at tuning out the background noise that was the TV, which was only turned off if he went to bed instead of falling asleep in front of it.  Most of the time, it stayed on.

Gentle Reader! Do you have any idea what it's like to sit in the parlor, trying to read:

Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe; I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!

while somebody in the next room is screaming, "You're out! You're out!  Motherf**ker, you're out!" at shadowy screen images of the Yankees?

So it was with a giddy sense of liberation that I decided not to have a television anymore.

The man I subsequently married (my present husband, or shall I say, my current husband - neither description is really satisfactory, as both adjectives seem to imply a temporary state of affairs that I am far from wishing to impute to our condition of Actively Wedded Bliss) is emphatically on the same page as myself when it comes to Ban the TV.  In fact, he claims that the decisive moment that set the "Now, this is the girl for me!" alarm bells to jangling in his head came on the day we went shopping to furnish the apartment we were planning to share, and he pointed to a television set the size of the Ziegfeld's Cinemax screen and tenderly inquired as to whether I'd like to acquire it, only to be met with an eye-roll, a moue, and a muttered, "Do we even have to have a TV?  I mean...I know most people do, but...couldn't we just put in a couple of extra bookcases and call it a day?"

Gentle Reader...he married me.

Of course, since I came fully equipped with a ten year old son from my first marriage - a son who, let's not forget, had been raised on television - and since I am sort of a pushover when it comes to my kid, we did eventually get a television set, which we put in my son's room with strict orders that we never wanted to hear the thing blaring.  We didn't, however, get cable, which meant we had no TV reception.  Instead, my son was allowed unlimited Netflix, and on these he eked out a miserable, media-deprived existence until the poor, fierce-eyed child saved up enough Christmas and birthday money from various relatives to buy his own Xbox - which happened, as I recall, by the time he was eleven.

Of course, I am not completely unaware that I have been missing some seriously good television in the last nine years.  When everybody on Facebook was talking about Downton Abbey, I was genuinely tempted.  A costume drama... Now, there was a thing!  And all of the actors talking in those rich, plummy British accents that I remembered so fondly from my own teenage Masterpiece Theatre  years!

Predictably, it was the Son and Heir who finally got me to crack and watch a television show for the first time in all these years. (Those re-run episodes of Supernatural that I used to watch while pedaling away on the exercise bike at the Paris Health Club, like those broken bits of cookie coaxed out the bottom of the bag on the end of a well-licked forefinger, do not count.)  The Scion of My Domain is on spring break this week, and most of his friends are not.  He was moping about, looking forlorn, and I offered to "do something together."  While he is too well-mannered to actually give a Bronx cheer, he looked one, before he caught himself and said, "Well, that's nice of you, but what could we do? I mean, together?"

Maternal love knows no bounds; I took a deep breath and ventured, "We could....we could watch something on TV together."

At this, his eyebrows rocketed nearly to the top of his head, and his voice took on a strained quality.  "Like what?"

I knew better than to say, "Downton Abbey," because, as my son would say, "That'd be a game-ender."  So I blushingly brought forth, "Well...I've heard a lot about Breaking Bad.  A lot of people say it's pretty good."

His face took on a reverent glow.  "That show is amazing."  Then he shook his head and added accusingly, "But you wouldn't like it."

"Maybe I would," I argued.  "Look, let's watch the first episode together."

He kept shaking his head.  "Nah.  You'd just bag on it, the way you bag on everything that's good."

This stung me to the quick.  "Come on.  Right now - let's watch it. I won't snap on it, I swear!"

He looked at me doubtfully, then grinned and shrugged.  "All right."

Of course, it was good.  Of course, I liked it.  Of course, my son couldn't believe that I would get into the adventures of a mild-mannered middle-aged pedant who,clad in nothing but an apron and a pair of tighty whities, kicks over the traces and decides to set up a meth lab.  In vain did I try to explain to my son that it's bad writing I object to, not controversial subject matter.  There is an awful lot of garbage on TV, and that's just a fact.  For that matter, there is an awful lot of garbage in the movie theaters, on the stages, and, for that matter, on the bookstore shelves.  The trick is rummaging past all the garbage to find the gems.  And they do exist - I'll be the first to admit it.

My son has an appointment with the oral surgeon to have all four of his wisdom teeth pulled this Friday.  He is not, to put it mildly, at all pleased at the prospect of "wasting perfectly good vacation days on oral surgery when I could be getting out of school!"  I promised to help him get through the ordeal by 1. Stocking the freezer with sorbet and 2. Watching back-to-back episodes of Breaking Bad with him.

"You know," I said thoughtfully, as I evicted the dog, who had spent the last hour lying on top of my foot and watching the antics of the mobile meth lab with us, "the really dark humor reminds me a little of one of the few shows I used to watch, back when I still had a TV.  Have you ever watched Six Feet Under?"

My son shook his head.  "Nah.  Funny undertakers? I don't see it."

"Look," I said.  "How about if we watch a bunch of Breaking Bad, and then when we're tired of it, we can check out Six Feet Under, and if you hate it, we don't have to watch it.  Whaddaya say? Please?"

So that's the plan, and, while I naturally wish it didn't involve oral surgery and blood-soaked gauze pads and endless containers of yogurt, I must confess, I can hardly wait for Friday afternoon so I can find out what happens next in the life of the Caspar Milquetoast of Meth.  Of course, we'll have to turn it off and chuck the remote under the bed as soon as we hear my husband's key in the front door.