(Tele)Visions of the Past

[I started this post in March or April, and did not finish it until October, which shows that I am no good at getting things done on time, but most people reading probably already know that.]

March was a bad month for television stars relevant to my generation, the dreaded (or, perhaps more accurately, largely ignored) Generation X. 

First came the death of Luke Perry. He played Dylan on Beverly Hills, 90210, which was inescapable for people my age.  (It was the hot teen show when I was a teenager.)

Beverly Hills, 90210 began the trend of teen soap operas, and ever since then there has been at least one teen soap on the air (Dawson’s Creek, The O.C., Gossip Girl, etc.).  Perry had a role on the latest teen soap, Riverdale (the Spock-with-a-beard version of Archie Comics), bringing his career, and in some ways the teen soap genre itself, full circle.  

Then we learned that Jan Michael-Vincent had died.  (He had actually died in February, but it wasn’t publicly reported until March.)  He played Stringfellow Hawke, the lead character on Airwolf.  Airwolf was a show about a heavily-armed combat helicopter from the time when helicopters abounded on prime time television  (Airwolf, Blue Thunder, Magnum, P.I., Riptide . . . ).  And the helicopters were part of a larger prime time television trend of fistfights, car chases, and explosions that made the Eighties a great time to be a ten-year-old boy.

Finally there was the enormous college admissions scandal, which implicated, among many others, Lori Loughlin, who played Aunt Becky on Full House.  

Full House was an intensely stupid show, but I watched it, because in those days I would watch almost anything. (Nobody had the internet yet.) 

If anything good is to come from this scandal, it is that Lori Loughlin might be forced, under oath, in a court of law, to explain whatever happened to predictability, the milkman, the paperboy, evening TV. 

At this point I would like to write a humorous courtroom dialogue between Lori Loughlin and a prosecuting attorney, filled with lots of snarky references to Full House.  But I can only really remember three concrete things about the show:

1.  Uncle Jesse played drums with the Beach Boys.

2.  Uncle Joey had some sort of Ranger Woodchuck puppet.

3.  Someone named Kimmy Gibbler existed.