Notebook Hook: Forever a Fan of Catastrophe Mastery

Not too long ago, I was bubbling over with enthusiasm for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  Since then, I've enjoyed many a return cruise down the Amazon, streaming entertainment as easily as if I'd rolled up to a drive-thru and yelled, "I'll take two dystopian life-after-deaths, one bag of bite-sized love stories, one round of Russian roulette, one middle-aged shotgun wedding, and one woman called a kind of motel who likes to break the fourth wall."  

Each show has its charms.  And although they're all different, they're also sweet and salty by turns, not unlike McDonald's French fries.  Here's a lightning fast food round sound bite for each:

Upload: What happens after we die with a twist. 

Forever: What happens after married people die with a twist.

Modern Love: Kind of sappy but kind of nice.

The Romanoffs: Kind of creepy but kind of great.

Catastrophe: Brit wit buffering bad romance.

Fleabag: A woman who tries not to be awful.  

I like them all, but it's this quote from Catastrophe that sticks with me:

Sharon Morris (Sharon Horgan) and Rob Norris (Rob Delaney) (they of the bad romance) on downsizing:

Sharon: "I'm a simple person.  I'm from Ireland."

Rob: "You're not a simple person.  You're a clothes fiend who moved from Ireland to London because it has more shopping."

This speaks to me because, clothes.  Yet in terms of the deep stuff, i.e., the meaning of life and human relationships, it's Upload and Forever that I find the most thought provoking.  Also confusing.  But then, thought provoking things usually are.  And that, of course, is why we (I?) watch TV.  To be enlightened (also to escape, but that's a rant for another post).  Not the way we're enlightened by books.  Because books don't have product placement or opportunities for us to exclaim, hey, wasn't the main guy the stepbrother in that movie about the halfway house for hoarders?  But the way we're included in a world of walking, talking people thoughtfully mapped out for us.  

I like TV so much that every time I finish watching a series, I write the name of it in a notebook.  I also have notebooks for each movie I watch, each book I read, and each Pinterest board I create.  I started doing this in March, when I began quarantining, and I'm so glad I did.  It's nice to look back on what I've been doing and think about what I've learned.  Because fiction isn't just fun -- although it is fun, much more so than a pre-popcorn spin on the Tilt-A-Whirl -- it's a learning experience.  In the eighth grade, I got annoyed with this math whiz who said that novels are important only because they help people relax (yes, this is what nerd fights are).  She made reading sound as if it had as much value as playing mini golf.  I disagreed, insisting that reading isn't just a hobby but an important way for us to understand the world.  Or something like that.  Maybe I just called her an ass clown and stole her algebra homework; I don't know; it was twenty-five years ago.  The point is, I still believe that books are our greatest teachers.  And infinitely better than birdies.  

Hence, the notebooks.  And the devotion to, not just Amazon's books, but its programming on ye olde boob tube.  I guess you could say that I'm a collector -- no, make that hoarder -- of vicarious adventures.

Maybe there's a halfway house out there for that.