Blood on the Tube

We are streaming some sanguinary shows at night before we drift into Dream Time, and I have to say that they don't make me all that sanguine about our species.

Here's a list of the things we're streaming (about 10 min or so of each one each night):

• Fargo (season 2)
• Wire in the Blood (season 5)
• True Detective (season 3)
• The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (season 1*)

The last few nights we have seen: a butcher kill a would-be assassin with a cleaver (Fargo), an 11-year-old girl on the street, grabbed and dragged screaming into a car (Wire in the Blood), a former police detective losing his mind to dementia--continually troubled by the disappearance of a young girl years earlier (True Detective), a young boy murdered at an exclusive boys' school (Lynley). 

Now--the principal reason I watch only about ten minutes of each one? I just can't take much more of it. My heart rate accelerates, my BP elevates, my terror escalates. And none of this is good before Dream Time commences.

Joyce would probably watch more, but guess who grips the remote while we are watching? I think she's used to this Purely Male Prerogative with the streaming devices; I mean, she hasn't left me ... yet. Right?

And I am ashamed of what I do--but not sufficiently so to alter my behavior. I just can't take the tension.

So ... a very logical question is surely occurring to you right now: Why do you even watch those shows?

Good question.

But let's move on.

Besides revealing the sorry state of my manhood (chickening out after 10 minutes, commanding the remote), these shows also depress me for what they show us about Homo sapiens. Not all of us, it seems, are very nice.

We lie, we murder, we dismember, we rape, we cheat, we steal, we ... well, we will do just about anything, it seems--at least in TV shows. Surely, we don't do these things in Real Life ... do we?

Yeah, of course we do. In spades.

As I suggested above, watching such things in bed at night is not all that wise, for we are providing some ... unpleasantness ... for the scriptwriters who are crafting our dreams.

But to answer an earlier question: I think we watch them because the writing is generally excellent, the actors wonderful. And--best of all (and very unlike the Real World)--the Bad Guys get caught in the end. Always.

So--in a way--they are fairy tales--fully as grim (Grimm!), fully as cautionary.

And besides--we try to end each viewing session with something more ... pleasant. A genial comedian (John Mulaney, Sebastian Maniscalo, Mike Birbiglia). Right now, we're streaming--at the end of the bloodbaths--the latest Netflix series by Ricky Gervais, After Life, which makes us both laugh and grimace and laugh at the grimaces.

And as we turn off the lights, I try to fill my brain with ... with ... with, well, what one of my old children's records tried to teach me--"the pleasant things that we have seen and done!"

The record was called Manners Can Be Fun. (The audio is available here.) The book, 1936, was written by Munro Leaf, author of The Story of Ferdinand, also 1936.

A flower-sniffing bull? Not a bad image to take me to sleep!

* For some reason we've been watching Lynley backwards--starting with its final season; we've now reached season 1.