It’s Howdy Doody Time: What We’re Watching
By: Julie Freestone
Tags: Pandemic, TV

By Julie Freestone and Rudi Raab

Just as a lead in to this blog, it might be worth mentioning a few things from our childhoods.

Julie’s early years with television

Julie watched this TV show in the fifties in New York City

Julie’s first experience with watching television was in the fifties, when one advantaged friend in her apartment building in the Bronx, New York, got the first TV in the neighborhood. All the elementary-school aged children would gather to watch “I Remember Mamma”. A few years later, when Julie’s family acquired their own set, she remembers a show called “Winky Dink and You” that involved putting acetate green square over the screen to help find the cartoon character. When she went to live with her cousins at age eight, watching was rationed and limited to Lassie and Walt Disney World. And viewing had to be done from across the room to avoid harmful rays. She remembers one movie she saw in the fifties with her mother: Red Shoes.

Rudi’s story

When Rudi grew up there was no television. When he was about eight years old, the pub, which was about a mile to west, got a set. What a sensation. All the boys in the neighborhood went there together to arrive at promptly 11:00 am. on Sunday. Each one of them had 25 Pfennigs and each ordered a frothy drink (nonalcoholic) to be nursed for the next half hour. They watched the screen with anticipation. They saw the test pattern and heard a whistling, high-pitched sound. And then suddenly, the jingle started and one saw a foot tapping the beat. It was “My Three Sons”, dubbed in German. The boys watched with fascination. Then, 30 minutes later, it was over. The test pattern re-appeared. They finished their drinks and went home. This was all the TV there was until a few years later.

And now to the modern era

Titus Weiliver as Harry Bosch

A few years ago, Rudi started reading the Harry (Hieronymus) Bosch detective stories. He listened to one as he was driving from Richmond, California to Gillette, Wyoming. According to him, nothing is greater than driving in a damn straight line for hours across the Great Salt Lake listening to tales of Harry Bosch. Then our friend Jane discovered the TV series on Amazon Prime, based on the same books. Rudi has eagerly binge-watched each season whenever Julie went away for the game-week-end to Inverness. (This year’s was cancelled). He and Jane consult eagerly about the arrival of a new show.

Things we’ve watched in the past

We’re not going for an intellectual award for our viewing tastes. Years ago when Rudi was a cop and worked swing shift — and when Julie used to stay up much later than she does now — she got hooked on “Sex in the City” and watched reruns of it regularly for a long time after the 11 p.m. news.

And we did go through a short period when we were in love with “Downtown Abbey”. But when Matthew was abruptly killed at the end of season two and Shirley Maclaine made an odd appearance in Season Three, we stopped watching and never picked it up again. When Julie had her detached retina surgery and her doctor advised no reading or computer work for a week, she binged on “The Crown” and loved it.

One more word about our viewing habits: We usually watch the news from 5–6:15 or so. It’s a combination of local news, national news and PBS giving us a better view of what’s really happening. We are also making dinner around this time so especially for Julie, it’s rarely an uninterrupted stretch. After dinner, following a tradition that began in 1964 and continued erratically since, Julie watches “Jeopardy”. And since the lockdown, she’s added “Wheel of Fortune”, which is about the most inane show available and such an antidote to news coverage that it’s like eating cotton candy.

Recommendations we got

We often get recommendations from friends about books to read, movies to watch and TV shows to tune into. It’s been like this for years and for some reason, we rarely pursue the ideas. So when the lockdown began weeks ago, we thought it would be a great opportunity to seize upon some of those suggestions. How has that worked out?

The clamor seemed to be for “The Good Wife “and “Unorthodox”, as well as some votes for “Babylon Berlin”. (While surfing about to find “Unorthodox”, Rudi discovered a new season of Harry Bosch. He has not planned on watching it just yet, but he is thinking about it. Nearly constantly.)

Anyway, we’ve watched one episode of “Unorthodox” — it’s in Yiddish, which is fun to hear. Rudi understands more it than Julie does; he has a PhD in Medieval German literature which is pretty much Yiddish. And Julie’s mother, father and aunts talked Yiddish when then didn’t want to kids to understand their conversation. It’s a good thing Rudi understands most of what they are saying because he’s a slow reader and subtitles go by fast. It seems to be a pretty serious story about a young woman who escapes an ultra-orthodox Jewish community and flees to Germany.

We started the “Good Wife” last week and find it absorbing. No pandemic involved. Just murder, mayhem, corruption, sex and lies. We’re happy to see there are seven seasons of it. Even if we binge watch, we might either get sick of it or the lockdown will be over before we run out of episodes.

Before the lockdown, someone in Los Angeles was talking to Julie Freestone and Rudi Raab about including their story, told in their novel Stumbling Stone, in a TV series. She and the idea seem to have disappeared, hopefully not permanently.