With all due respect to Mark Wills and his song 19-something, where he professes “his first love was Daisy Duke and them cutoff jeans”; this first version of One Day at a Time provided me with my corresponding first crush. Again for the younger readers who may not be aware of who Daisy Duke was, she was a prominent character on the late 1970’s – early 1980’s series Dukes of Hazzard. Miss Daisy Duke was portrayed by the actress Catherine Bach, much to the delight of multiple demographics. She helped carry the show’s popularity for the better part of seven seasons. With an appreciable nod to Catherine Bach and her acting chops, I felt transported into the memories of a young boy who first laid eyes on a teenage Barbie Cooper. Outside of the small screen, Barbie Cooper was in real life known as Valerie Bertinelli. In addition to her breakout role on One Day at a Time (and later on starring in the show Hot in Cleveland), she was the lead in countless TV movies and heavily featured in recurring roles on other shows. Her relevancy nowadays may be more tied to her former husband Eddie Van Halen (may he rest in peace) or being the mom to Wolfgang Van Halen.
My final submission into evidence is of a darker, shadowy nature. Those shadows representing the short-lived horror series Tales from the Darkside, which ran on late night weekend TV from October 1983 until 1988. When the show first aired, I was 11 years old. At the show’s conclusion, I was nearly 16 years old. Reruns of Tales from the Darkside along with The Dukes of Hazzard and One Day at a Time were still in circulation through the mid to late 1980’s, but then mostly disappeared for some time. These shows are once again available on DVD/Blu-ray collections (Tales from the Darkside) or on certain streaming services like IMDBTV (One Day at a time). I sense a few of you twirling your fingers in a get-to-the-point motion.
What is so significant about these shows I mentioned above? To anyone who knows me, you probably have heard me say over the years that I feel like a teenage boy (in mind), but trapped in an older person’s body. I readily admit that enjoy Beavis and Butthead level humor and the simplier things. So for me to rediscover, if you will, these mainstream classics from my youth and start rewatching them 30-35 years later feels a bit surreal. I can still mentally picture myself sitting on the family room couch after dinner watching One Day at a Time and singing along to the opening theme (singing the wrong words by the way). Or stretched out on my bed, in my parent’s house in Dittmer, late Saturday nights waiting for Tales from the Darkside to come on after the news. Anticipating the creepy intro theme on my 13 inch standard definition color TV…oh the chills.
Going back three plus decades, you had to watch the episodes when they ‘came on’ regular TV during their normal time slot. Or you had to set the VCR to record the episodes to watch later, praying that the show didn’t run over the amount of time programmed or that the VHS tape you selected was a ‘good’ one and didn’t have the common issues of that time and medium.
In the here and now, these episodes are available to binge watch by the season(s) if you wish. Back then, this simply was not an option, unless you had recorded all the episodes to have a marathon watch party. ** Notable for the VHS cassette media and with the VCR settings: a VHS tape could be recorded in three different formats. SLP (Super Long Play) which would give you six hours of recording time, but at the lowest quality picture setting, SP (Standard Play) which was the best quality setting, but only afforded you two hours of recording time per tape and LP (Long Play) which was in the middle quality-wise, but did give you four hours of recording time. Without going too far down the rabbit hole, VHS tapes were clunky and prone to fail after so many uses or due to age. If you never used a VHS tape and want to unstand their unreliability, Google problems with VHS tapes. The list of issues is considerable especially when you were dependant upon that format to try to capture shows you hadn’t seen or wouldn’t be reshown for three to six months. This would be very upsetting to devoted fans of series were each episode was built upon the previous one.
With no worry of extra grainy video or having to change out tapes every so often, it is cool and a bit unsettling to be able to binge these shows from a time that I was still having to finish my homework. This is especially the case with the example of the show One Day at a Time. As an 8 year old boy, being enthralled by mid-teens Barbie Cooper is one thing, but to be 35 years her senior now is a sad thing. Granted in real life, Valerie is 12 years my senior as she was born in 1960, but still it’s a little mentally twisted for young me still trapped inside to process.
As a child of wonder in the 1980’s (see Netflix’s Stranger Things for reference), you may bump into these former personalities on Twitter or Instagram and not know why they are anybody of note. When all else fails, hit up the Google machine and maybe learn a little history that hasn’t been canceled yet.
I hope everyone’s weekend has been good and there is a soft landing into the Monday thang. I implore you to try to be open to learning new topics and different points of view without becoming irrationally hostile for no reason. Until next, try to enjoy the daylight…or at least the benefits of a moderate amount of daylight on your skin.
Peace. #33 – The Freak / <<07-25-2021>>
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