Well, that took longer than expected to settle out. Sorry for the long delay in my return to blogging. I had to make the choice between keeping on schedule with the paying work or this work of the heart and with two kids and a wife, you can imagine which won out. Normally, with this being a Wednesday, I would post something for writers. Instead I am going to get a little introspective, though it probably still does apply to writers.
I read some reviews today on two of the shows I grew up with. These shows were “Small Wonder” and “Out of this World”. Of course, I was somewhere between 5 and 7 when I was watching them actively, so my youthful perspective might not match a more adult viewpoint. That said, they were cute and novel. They had fun moments and odd ideas that bucked the norm of many other shows I was exposed to at the time. They were certainly products of their era, but to me I have nothing but good memories. I can still remember sitting with my grandmother watching episodes with a great fondness.
I admit there is some nostalgia coming into play here, but I think perhaps I also hold the new to a different standard than the tried-and-true. Romeo and Juliet was a story told by several others before Shakespeare refined it into what we know today. Time and again, stories told for the first time are rough and imperfect. They offer something new and novel, so they gain a following. Others come after and begin to refine those stories. I suspect that if taken from that viewpoint, at least some of the harsh critics might find that there was a value to these shows that went beyond their sitcom natures.
I could be wrong of course, but that is my perspective on it.