90s Daytime Television
by Frank Jackson
9am — Live with Regis and Kathie Lee
Regis makes a phone call to a lady in Des Moines, Iowa. He asks her a Hollywood question and she gets it wrong. She’s pretty chipper about the whole thing. They hardly even address the fact she had no idea who played Cleopatra in the 1963 version of the movie directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Kathie Lee seems more interested in what type of dogs the lady has barking in the background. Kathie Lee’s son Cody loves dogs, but her husband Frank is deathly allergic. Mom carefully brings me a bowl of scalding-hot Lipton Noodle soup. She has also been watching the show from our 12-inch television in the kitchen. “Elizabeth Taylor, you fucking moron,” she says. “I knew that one. How come they never call me,” she says.
10am — The Maury Povich Show
Maury brings out groups of couples mismatched in weird ways. A seven-foot-tall man dating a four-foot-tall woman. A woman making six-figures married to a chronically unemployed man. A tatted-up biker lady with a Christian-fundamentalist nebbish boyfriend. Maury decides to bring out a former boyfriend of the tatted-up biker lady. He is equally tatted-up and keeps giving glancing looks toward the bible-thumping boyfriend. The crowd begins to feed upon the threat of his remarks. Maury loses control of the environment and soon the hired studio audience bodyguards are pulling various teeth from ankles. Maury is loving it and cuts to commercial. I’m shivering under the blanket, which is the couch blanket, which is itchy, and uncomfortable.
11am — The Price is Right
Mom vacuums the room during Plinko, by far my favorite game on the show, and ignoring my protests to stop. The contestant is looking to the audience, specifically to his family for strategic guidance to the exact spot he should lower his Plinko chip down the jagged board. He lets the chip fall, and watches it pinball its way toward the $0 column and settles there. His family is distraught. The contestant lowers the rest of his chips down and the results are pretty much the same. His family seems to have given up on him. I’m sweating through the blanket.
12pm— Action 4 News
The news stories seem impossible. A dog was shot to death. A family is wrongly being evicted from their home. There is a medical breakthrough for a disease I’ve never heard of. I’m slipping in and out. Mom brings me a bottle of Robitussin, breaks half of her bologna and cheese sandwich, hands it to me, and sits beside me for the weather report. She’s had a long-standing crush on Cedric the Action 4 weatherman. “Alright, Ceddy Bear,” she says.” Cedric provides the weather indicators while dishing insightful analysis. The barometric pressure is rising. We’re heading toward an Indian summer. It’s the hottest September on record. He sends it back to the newscasters, both of whom flirt casually with him. “Mhm, no you don’t,” she says in between bites. “Ceddy Bear is mine.”
1pm – Mama’s Family
Mama has been knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital. I’ve woken up halfway through the episode and quickly attempt to piece the plot together by I’m disoriented and the plot is different from the usual format of the show. It’s being told mostly in the form of stylized dreamy flashbacks, where every action seems exaggerated. Vint, who is Mama’s overly pathetic son, wants to know what the hell happened to her. How did Mama get knocked out? Mama’s daughter and daughter-in-law, who were there when it happened, tell Vint versions of the story from their unreliable viewpoints. Everything is in question. I feel the same as Vint, confused, angry, and determined to know the truth. Mama herself finally comes out of the hospital room, with a full bandage wrapping around her head. Vint implores her, “Who did this to you?” Mama looks at each of them, one-by-one, turns to the doctor and says, “I’ve never seen any of these people before in my life.”
2pm – Family Feud
The conflicting dinging of correct answers and buzzing of wrong answers harass me as I sweat and struggle attempting to fall back asleep. The itchiness of couch blanket crawls across me. Being on Family Feud requires five competent members of your family, and as much as I try putting a team together in my head, there’s never a combination that makes sense. Mom is busy at work on the kitchen phone starting her telemarketing shift. I can overhear her asking someone, “Have you thought about changing to a new dentist?” There is a long pause, until finally, she says, “I apologize, thank you for your time.” A few more calls end in similar manner. She slams the phone and screams.
3pm — Baywatch
Pamela Anderson is running across the across the beach and dives into the ocean. Mom checks in. “What’re you doing in there?” I lie, and yell back that I’m watching Columbo. I lower the volume, and take another swig of the medicine. “Mom! Can you make me another bologna sandwich?” I hear the sound of the refrigerator door opening and wine from the box being released. “After I get through another batch of calls,” she says. “You feeling better?” I avoid the question and close my eyes. In my dreams I imagine Pamela Anderson except the roles are reversed. I am the lifeguard and she is stranded at sea. I am saving her life. Giving her mouth-to-mouth. I wake up to the credits, Mom angrily standing over me, flipping the channel, taking a bite of my sandwich as she hands it to me.
4pm – Lifetime Movie: Not Without My Daughter
One of my classmates rings the doorbell and brings me the assignments I’ve missed from the day and I set them aside. Mom has given up on the work day, sits on the couch, my feet propped on her lap. The mother in the Lifetime movie is being held captive by her husband in some hostile foreign country. She has the opportunity to escape to America, but as she states convincingly to her liaison, she will not leave without her daughter. “A mother will survive anything for her child,” she says. The mother on screen continues enduring ordeal after ordeal, until finally, the day comes when they make their daring escape together. Will they make it to the embassy? Will they make it safety? The moment has our full attention.
Frank Jackson received his MFA in Fiction from the Writer’s Foundry at St. Joseph’s University. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Monty Culver Award from the University of Pittsburgh. His fiction has appeared recently in journals such as McSweeney’s, Okay Donkey, HAD, X-R-A-Y, and BULL.
Original image: Ajeet Mestry/Unsplash
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