Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

I have this weird thing where I stop watching a streaming series before the end. Maybe a few episodes, maybe an entire season.

I did it with ‘Murder, She Wrote’ and ‘MASH’ and ‘Family Affair’ and ‘That Girl’ and now ‘Xena’ is on my backburner a few episodes before it ends. ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ is frozen after Ted and Georgette married. ‘The Walking Dead.’ ‘Law and Order SVU’ …. its a pretty long list. And strangely grounded in the 70s, right? Oh yes, ‘ All in the Family’ and ‘Maude’ are in the loop, too.

This is why I love soap operas. You never really say good-bye to anyone. No one is truly dead. No one is above a good recast. On Days of Our Lives, Stefano DiMera died 9 billion times, gaining the nickname ‘The Phoenix’ lived as an essence in another character over four years and continuing to have long lost or unknown kids pop into Salem. That’s hard core commitment to the character. I like it.

I know this is silly. These shows ended decades ago, several began before I was even born. As a devotee of spoilers, I already know what will happen – Mary gets fired, but Ted does not; Ann Marie gets engaged, but no wedding; Edith dies; Maude goes to Congress; etc, etc, etc. Also, I grew up on the syndicated rerun circuit that was 1970s and 1980s television. I’ve already seen most of these episodes frozen in time on my streaming queue. Many of the actors are dead.

Maybe not watching the final seasons does create a temporal loop in time where Prue and Anya do not die, where Archie’s Place ends with dignity, where you can enjoy the OG show about nothing (Bob Newhart) even as the world was exploding. Suzanne is still a Sugarbaker. Fonzie did not jump an actual shark. Dobie and Zelda grow up. Laura Ingalls doesn’t lose her man to Gidget.

Oh, yes, I stopped with the penultimate episode of The Next Generation and skipped right over to Deep Space Nine. I did finish Voyager (meh) but not Discovery. Sometimes if the science feels wacky, I back away. Space slingshots through time are a stretch even for me.

I don’t want my relationship to these characters to end. A good tearful unexpected death is hard, but the cast is intact. We soldier onward.

You’d think that perhaps a solution could be British television which tends to have shorter seasons and limited series shows more often than not. It could be literal decades, but the possibility of another season of ‘Sherlock’ isn’t out of the question. But then again shows like ‘Monarch of the Glen’ slide into their final season with only the character actors still on board.

With reboots, spin-offs, network shifts, and fanfic, there’s no actual reason to have to leave these programs behind. Or I can watch them again.

Perhaps growing up with tv shows not streaming, requiring me to tune in at a time and date of their choice just overwhelms my pop culture consumption settings?

Maybe it is tied to my returning again and again to NaBloPoMo, even when its clearly not a thing. Or feeling the heaviness of my relevancy with a 20 year blog. Or abandonment issues.

If this is the most difficult thing I contemplate today, that’s a win for everyone.