This Long, Longing Season

IMPORTANT NOTE: My annual Readers Poll of the best and worst of TGD will be posted this month! If you still want to cast a vote, please share your fave/least fave episodes or scenes from S6 in the comments of THIS post and I’ll try to include it.

I’ve never liked summer much.

This is to say that I find something to cherish and adore in ALL the seasons, but summer is the one in which I find the least. It’s not even a close call.

How come? You may ask. (If you’re not asking WTF is wrong with you, Kelli? that is.)

Well…

It’s the heat. Humidity + heat is a beast unto itself, but even on a “dry” day, I bristle at anything over 81 degrees Fahrenheit.
It’s the intrusive bugs… from mosquitos on your skin to cicadas drowning out your every thought.
It’s the tornado warnings.
(Or…) It’s the absence of any rain for WEEKS.
It’s the necessity to wear “short” clothes much of the time. (Admittedly this wasn’t as much of a drag when I was younger and slimmer.)
It’s the vacations taken by so many that my husband and I can rarely afford.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I find something to love regardless; I’m fond of garden-fresh tomatoes, days at the beach, Russian sage bushes, homemade chocolate chip ice cream, porch swings at sunset, weeks without school… I could go on. I really could.

But the absence of school also perpetuates a deep relaxing of structure, which of course is the ticket to happiness for some. Not me, though… not for long, anyway.

I’m loathe to admit this, but I probably connect my TV-viewing schedule to those “structure” needs. Gotta spend 20-25 minutes tidying up the kitchen? Then find your pile of sitcoms on the DVR, pick one, and dig in as you fill up that sink. Got clean laundry to sort and fold? That should be just enough time for the first act of Naked & Afraid. While I don’t try to multitask while writing something like, say, this article (not anymore!), it seems that I pair off my more mundane tasks & TV programming the way some partner dinner options and fine wine.

Watching things in real-time is more of a capital “S” Structure thing; something that both Baby Boomers and Gen Xers like myself were raised on well before the advent of streaming services and on-demand programming. Your viewing options relied heavily on what hour of the day it was; The Today Show, The Tonight Show, The Late Show, The Late Late Show, etc. bore those names for a reason. But nothing was so revered as PRIME TIME– those 3 magic hours of the evening between dinner and bedtime, depending on your time zone– and those select offerings that debuted sometime between September and May and repeated select episodes through the summer. Unless they were pre-empted, that is, by anything from the mundane (Starlight Vocal Band Show… GOOGLE IT!) to the historic (Summer Olympic Games).

Obviously we’re in a different world now, at least as far as all that is concerned. I can stretch my springtime viewing into the summer… and I did. I can stretch my earlier-this-summer viewing on past Labor Day… and I am. I can watch PBS docs, White Sox games, and Turner Classic Movies– my default summer programming choices when the other stuff runs out– whenever I feel like it. (Except the White Sox games… and yes, I know it’s debatable how much of a difference it makes when they are as far down in the standings as they are.)

But here’s the thing: I haven’t been budgeting my TV time of late because, due to the ongoing WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes, I have the perpetual feeling that It Just Doesn’t Matter. Know what I mean?

Let me be clear as crystal about this: I’ve got nothing but support for the members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), and the Writers Guild of America (WGA). I’m especially sympathetic towards the WGA since, while never having been a member, I am a writer by profession and have been “treated” to similar struggles with fair wages in a crowded industry, as well as concerns that AI technology will replace much of what I have to give my craft.

And it’s definitely times like these when I’m rather grateful to be someone on the outside– the way, waaaay outside– looking in, with the strikes serving as a mere inconvenience in my life as opposed to the difference between keeping myself fed, housed, and otherwise taken care of. Especially since both my husband and I got our start in local TV, with lower-scale versions of some of the jobs affiliated with strikers– camera operators, floor directors, audio engineers, producers, directors. And we’ve worked with freelance makeup artists, lighting consultants, actors, etc… while I’m not sure how many of them were unionized, I know none of them are doing full-day shoots for the sheer love of it. They have bills to pay, like anyone else.

Some of you might recall that I keep busy in local theater as often as I can. My friend Craig Underwood directs shows and workshops locally, but as a member of Actors’ Equity Association with SAG eligibility, his full-time work in recent years has been as a model/actor on the East Coast. His credits include Succession, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, Blue Bloods, and the forthcoming Girls on the Bus… but, like tens of thousands of other lesser-known actors, he hasn’t been able to fortify the on-screen part of his resume since June.

“I have had to go back to working as a server to supplement the income from working on these productions,” he tells me. “Which also makes it more difficult to audition and work on theatrical productions.”

Jill Bavar, another friend, is trying to make a living as an actor on the West Coast. Though she has landed appearances on The Resident, Doom Patrol, and the reboot of The Wonder Years, her progress has all but ground to a halt. “I was all set to start acting work full time during the week beginning in August, but the strike has delayed my entrance into the industry in that capacity,” she says. “With training, and headshots, and casting website costs, it is absolutely heartbreaking when people think that the actors are being selfish to ask for reasonable pay.”

So at this standstill we remain– the ones longing to write it, the ones yearning to perform it, and the ones who desperately want to watch it– in a staring contest with the ones with the money and power who are determined not to blink anytime soon.

(Meme courtesy of the Incorrect St. Bonaventure account on Twitter, or “X,” or whatever you are calling it currently)

Meanwhile, it feels like Steven Aaron Murphy was born *fourteen* months ago on *The Good Doctor* rather than four.

And that this hottest season on record has lingered like the Canadian wildfire smoke that overstays its welcome in the Upper Great Lakes region time and again.
The loose limbs of summer just aren’t quite as special when there’s nowhere in the foreseeable future for them to land… maybe even the most sun-kissed, heat-tolerant, mosquito-loving among you can attest to that!

It’s not all about temps and the TV season… I get that. The umbrella of “new” covers so many things in the fall– from classrooms to school supplies, from wardrobes to extracurriculars. And in the U.S., the autumnal return of American football is also celebrated (as at least half the world outside the U.S. probably knows too.)

But then, for those of us no longer in school (or the education industry), the September new-ness scales down to American football and the TV season. And this year… well, let’s just say I’m more into Annie Agar’s hilarious NFL recaps than the games themselves.

(Fellow figure skating fans, at least we’re finally making our way into GP territory, amirite?

Stay tuned for new State of the SkateMUSIC posts!

But I digress…)

While the Prime Time Emmy Awards have now been postponed to January (at the earliest), the show(s) WILL go on later this month by way of the 5 major TV networks, so long as it’s not a scripted series shot after May 2. Think game shows, talent contests, sports, reality shows, news magazines a la 60 Minutes, and things any network had “in the can” prior to 5/2/23.

For ABC (home to The Good Doctor), this means game show Wednesdays, a return of Dancing With The Stars (which spent the past year or two solely on Disney Plus), and a whole lotta attention on Golden Bachelor– the first of the Bachelor franchise to feature the over-50 crowd.

For CBS, it’s supersized editions of Survivor and (my personal fave) The Amazing Race on Wednesdays, the network premiere of Yellowstone (which streams on Paramount), and reruns co-mingling with imports (such as the original UK version of Ghosts) and first-run reality/game shows.

For CW, it’s “a schedule made up of Canadian imports, cable TV cast-offs, and the network's traditional unscripted programming” according to the corresponding TV Guide article. (Apparently CW has a new owner and is shifting its focus… something I guess I’d know if I watched anything on CW.)

For Fox, it’s cooking contests, singing contests, and (because apparently NOTHING will hold it down*), season 35 of The Simpsons along with its animated cohorts of Sunday night.

*It’s actually because animated series are scripted way in advance so the animators have ample time to do their thing.

And NBC, for its part, has the most “new” scripted drama but will still rely heavily on reruns, game shows, four hours a week of The Voice, and (surprise!) NFL and college football.

So what are YOU watching during this summer-to-autumn of our discontent? Old stuff? New stuff? No stuff? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

IMPORTANT NOTE: My annual Readers Poll of the best and worst of TGD will be posted this month! If you still want to cast a vote, please share your fave/least fave episodes or scenes from S6 in the comments of THIS post and I’ll try to include it.

The Best (and Worst) of Season 6: State of the Shea Readers’ Choice

Oh, Baby! Let's revisit that TGD S6 Wish List