Duck, Duck, Noose

My husband is in the throes of a hissy-fit.
He’s ready to string up A&E network. They refuse to rerun one particular episode of ‘Duck Dynasty’.
The one where–wait a minute.
You know about Duck Dynasty, right?

Half a year or so back I didn’t know what it was. Maybe I had seen advertisements and assumed it was another frightful reality show. The chaotic sort with a prescribed number of cuss words, bleeps, tantrums, breakdowns, fisticuffs, and flying furniture in each episode.

But my sane, moral, possibly-a-prude friend Susan told me she and her husband loved it. She challenged me to watch. (Raspberry Filling Women are not beyond wild and crazy dares.)

I watched. I loved. I dared my husband to watch. He watched. He loved.

So now we try to figure out the pandemonium that passes for program schedules on cable TV. Remember when we were young? We knew ‘The Partridge Family’ would air Friday evenings at 7.
 New episodes began in the fall.  Cable seasons, however, are determined by tipsy executives throwing darts at a calendar. Programs are shot out of a pellet gun and peppered throughout the week. Sometimes all the pellets hit one day and we could watch 24 hours of ‘Duck Dynasty’ and then spend another fortnight trying to find where the next episode landed. Woe betide the viewer without interactive TV guidance. We now keep a wary eye on A&E, afraid to blink.

One night I returned home from someplace-or-other and found a jubilant spouse. He handed me the remote (which refuses to interactivate for him) and said, “I watched the greatest episode of Duck Dynasty tonight! Show me the episodes coming up next. Maybe they will repeat it.”

That was a week ago. My poor husband, hope fading, has spent every evening we are together handing me the channel changer.
“Was it ‘Samuri Si?” I ask.
“No”  “Plan Bee?” “No” “Redneck Roadtrip? Daddy’s Got a Gun?  The Grass and the Furious?” “No, No, NO!”
He is in despair. Maybe it was too funny. Too redneck. Maybe they pulled it, and it will never see the light of day again.
I look online for previous episodes. There is only one I haven’t seen.
“Was it ‘Frog in One’, where Willie and Jase skip out of Career Day at their kids’ school to go golfing? And they find frogs on the golf course? And hunt them at night and tangle with security?”
My husband is grabbing his head, rocking back and forth and moaning.
“Stop!” he begs. “Now you know everything that is going to happen and it won’t be fun for you. But it doesn’t matter. It’s never going to air again. I just know it.”
**********
Dear Santa,
Please send my husband episode 4, Season One, of ‘Duck Dynasty’. Until you do I am a prisoner chained to a remote and a television.

I’ll take my blood in black and white

You have to hand it to crime dramas in the 21st century. They know their skeptical viewing audience. 

We aren’t gullible. 

Don’t just tell us the victim is dead. 

Show us.

Crime drama execs have complied. When someone is killed, there is no doubt. 

The corpse is deader than dead. 

The Prude sees (peeking though fingers in front of her eyes) that the dead person has a tinge of blue in the face, eyes departed from sockets, innards that are no longer innards but outards, and is lying any-which-way in a pool of what The Prude keeps telling herself is ‘tons of catsup, just tons of catsup’.

But there is absolutely no doubt that the dead person is really most sincerely dead.

How naive we Perry Mason fans were! We caught a glimpse of a dead person in the black and white world lying on the floor, eyes neatly closed, possibly a slight trickle of catsup from a tidy hole somewhere in the head, or a smear of catsup on a white shirt.

And–silly us– when that dead person was pronounced dead, we believed it! 

Why did it never occur to us to look more closely and wonder, “But maybe they aren’t really dead. Maybe that person is just sort of dead. Clearly there is not enough catsup, all their internal organs are still neatly encased internally, and the eyeballs are right where eyeballs are meant to be. Hence, I do not believe that victim is dead.”

We are no longer wet behind the ears. We no longer are required to suspend our disbelief. We’ve entered the wonderful world of verisimilitude. 

And doesn’t it give you pause to wonder:

When Dorothy ‘killed’ the Wicked Witch of the East, was there any gristle or gore? Well? 

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

Us cynical sophisticated types of the 21st century require much, much more.

Remember:

‘No tombstone until it's gruesome.’

REALLY most sincerely dead?

Put away your hanky.

Somewhere in a Hollywood ergonomically designed eco-friendly boardroom sits a group of carefully chosen representatives from every race, creed, color and dietary preference.

Their duty?

To ensure that each minority group, however small, is represented on some television show or movie.

Tough beautiful female cops, quirky mild male private detectives, psychotic CEO’s?

Check.

Forensic specialists/health care professionals with accents/limps/mother issues/eating disorders?

Check.

Children being raised by single parents, by 2 dads, by 2 moms, by one dad and several moms, by barnyard animals and with double digit numbers of siblings?

Check.

They agonize.

Has any subgroup been overlooked?

One relatively young, naïve board member timidly raises her hand.

She says she logged multiple hours noting which minority groups are represented and there is a glaring omission.

Impossible! She is told. We have everything covered!

(while they scramble to check if gypsy aliens who enter their toddlers in beauty pageants have a show)

Ms. Naïve stubbornly–if foolishly–sticks to her assertion.

There are no unmarried couples who wait till they are married before engaging in hanky panky.

The room is abuzz. There must be someone since The Partridge Family…

It seems she may be right. Unmarried couples who hanky and/or panky before the trip down the aisle are everywhere.

Belligerence sets in.

Hanky panky is everywhere! It is an accepted cultural norm! It is inconceivable that there could be any couples in the universe who aren’t hanky pankiers! This minority group can’t exist. It is a figment of the naïve board member’s imagination.

Nevertheless, anxiety ensues.

What if some odd, disparate non hankiers join with some quirky non pankiers and demand representation?

It could happen. 

But no one has a clue how to build a show around such a bizarre, socially deviant group.

It does, however, give them an idea for a new program:

Interventions for those who don’t hanky panky and giving them a fresh new start on a dance competition.