Saturday, June 21, 2008

Would you believe . . . ?

The first thing you need to know is that we hardly ever watched TV when I was growing up. When I was really little, the TV was up on the top of a tall cabinet (seemed tall to me, anyway) and it was hard to see, but I remember Sesame Street and--my favorites--the Electric Company and Zoom. All public television, of course. There were also Saturday morning cartoons, which I watched from the test pattern until 10:00--except for Road Runner. I hated Road Runner and turned it off. The Jetsons was my favorite with Scooby Doo as a close second.

Then when I was a little older, I was allowed to watch the introduction to "Mission Impossible" just before heading off to bed. "Your mission if you choose to accept it . . . " Remember? And the briefcase with the photos in it and then the smoke at the end? I never actually saw the show but my dad watched it which is why I got to see the intro, I guess. Later I watched "The Waltons" and my sister watched "Little House on the Prairie" and we could watch game shows if we were sick. (My favorite was "Password," hands down.) Every now and then, we could watch "Gilligan's Island" when we got home from school. And my parents even let me stay home from church once a year to watch "The Sound of Music" on Sunday night. Anyway, the point is that I didn't grow up watching a lot of TV, which was actually a pretty good way to grow up.

But when C and I were first married, he introduced me to all the TV shows that I had missed. That first year, we had so much fun watching old reruns together. It was fun for me to watch them for the first time and fun for C to watch me watching them for the first time. I found out pretty quick that I had outgrown "Gilligan's Island" and that "Leave It to Beaver" was more interesting than entertaining. We laughed every day at "The Dick van Dyke Show" and "I Love Lucy." I fell in love with "Andy Griffith" and have now seen every episode umpteen times along with my kids. But one of the shows we watched together that first year was "Get Smart," which you probably know just came out in theaters as a movie starring Steve Carrell as Max and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99.

We went to see the movie tonight and had so much fun. It is silly, silly, silly but in a clever and nostalgic way. And of course, the last line of the movie? "Missed it by that much!" Lots of silly fun.

3 comments:

Electric Monk said...

Ann and I went to see Get Smart yesterday. Not having grown up with the show we had a slightly different take on it. I vaguely remember the show from when I was a kid - I suppose it was in reruns - and I knew enough to "get" the joke about the phone in the shoe. I mostly went to see it because of Carrell, who is absolutely hilarious. We both liked it a lot. It was one of those movies that just makes you feel a little better after watching it. It's good to know that, to some degree, the government is still in CONTROL.

T said...

Steve Carrell is a genius. I didn't see him in the Noah's Ark movie but everything else I've seen is terrific, including the romantic comedy.

Scooter said...

I have been waiting for this to come out for a while. While I didn't remember as much as I thought, I still really enjoyed it. There were a couple of scenes I could have done without, but still really liked it. Hopefully, I will be able to convience Chaundra she would like it. Oh well, at least I got to see it otherwise. - A great childhood memory.