Day 66

I berate myself for watching too much tv: I blog about it all too often. I try, to convince myself that the hours I spend in front of the box are research for work: I’m critiquing production values and performance styles: gleaning ideas and stimulus to put to work in my classroom; this doesn’t happen enough.

I worry I suppose, that it suggests a lack of intellect: the couch potato aimlessly channel surfing as she reaches for more junk food: rotting her mind and body in mindless unison.

There is endless rubbish on our endless choice of channels: from the cheap, to the ugly and the downright corruptible but then there are series that have critics and audiences alike reaching for the box marked accolades.
Great drama ( be it theatrical, cinematic or televisual) has a power that’s undeniable. We understand more about war, deeply divided societies, illness and disease, natural disasters, Shakespearean texts, politics: local, global and historical, because writers, directors and performers have explored these subjects: allowing us to understand their complexities because we make emotional connections to characters created in the corner of our living spaces.

Blue Bloods is a formulaic police drama, set in my beloved NYC. It follows the fortunes of the family Reagan and their family business which happens to be New York’s finest: the NYPD. And yes, I’m particularly drawn to the youngest, most idealistic brother in his uniform: and I sleep safer in my bed each Tuesday night knowing that big brother Danny (Donnie Wahlberg once a New Kid on the Block) has put another dangerous criminal behind bars. The police drama formula works: that’s why there’s so damn many of them.

Last night’s episode (episode 12 of series 2) was one of the most poignant hours of tv I’ve seen in a while. It was subtly set up in the previous episode and came to an emotionally charged denouncement, by the way of the best mixing of family saga with those tried and tested police drama ingredients.

It was an episode that re-engaged the audience’s sensibilities with the horror and tragedy of 9/11; and like Sex and the City and most notably The West Wing before it, I was humbled by how deeply the tragedy is felt when you feel you ‘know’ someone that is involved, even if that someone is a fictional character in a tv programme. We can try to understand the pain and suffering of reality because we get to experience it within the ‘safer’ parameters of fiction.

There were over 3,000 people killed that day, eleven years ago and some of them were emergency service personnel who walked into the fire (and daily walk into the line of fire) to offer what Police Commissioner Reagan described as, ‘the last full measure of devotion.’
It was humbling, emotional and cathartic to remember this.