As the twenty-first hour of the last day of the weekend rolls around, I gather my wits and all the things I will need to sit in relative comfort by the light of the television screen … and relax.
Said things include: a cup of coffee and a glass of water, which has become my ill-advised habit of evening hydration; a bowl of snacks, preferably something salty and crunchy that will last at least fifteen minutes into the hour-long episode; and a warm blanket, preferably the light-colored down throw that I rediscovered last winter in a trunk I hadn’t opened since the early aughts.
Of all the things, the blanket is my favorite. It reminds me of one dragged through childhood: feather light, buttery soft, and surprisingly warm. I hold my breath as I scan the room for it before settling in. On occasion, the other inhabitants of the house remind me through first dibs that I’m not the only one who plays favorites. Will I get my trifecta of coziness, or will I have to settle with one of the less-than-comforting comforters?
My daughter, from 134 miles away, pings my phone.
“Are you watching?”
“Not yet,” I reply, realizing the remote control is not where I left it, indicating some other uses may have taken it into another room, left it in the crevice of a cushion, or kicked it under the couch in which I had prepared to embed myself like a potato.
This has been our ritual these last few Sundays, communing at the altar of HAMBOX … or whatever we call the newly merged cable networks of yore. We banter about the plot as it unfolds, we pick apart the costumes and the scenery. We arraign each character as if we have more than just a knee-jerk hunch about which will be exonerated and which will be found guilty of malfeasance. None, we surmise, will become heroes.
Some may call it a guilty pleasure – the pair of us following the formulaic and fictional depravities of the ultra-rich whilst they vacation and do crime in luxury resorts across the globe. We have come to think of it as a harmless distraction from the Pandora’s Box our fearsome leaders are insistent on opening.
“I’m getting a weird vibe about this chick,” my daughter muses, as I realize she means the young woman who accepts help from a man she appears to have no deeper feelings for than friendship... “She seems to be stringing him along..”
I don’t want to argue with her, but I want to put up a feminist guard. “Look how her man friend commandeered her attention when she was talking to some other men … I’m sensing some Ross Geller vibes.”
“I see your point. … But the three b’witches? What say ye?’
The three old friends. The three white, privileged women sing each others’ praises on one side of their mouths while cutting each other to the bone on the other side.
“Hit dogs will holler here.”
But what about politics? Two sat dumbfounded when the third revealed more conservatism than they had fathomed, and who then clammed up when asked directly if she had voted for Trump.
She hadn’t read the comments smeared all over the interwebs – from conservatives who have found their heroine and progressives who identify with the stunned silence – but she had pegged its message.
“It was purposefully unspeakable, and yet it will have us all talking until next week.”
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