Cheers, & MASH, & As Time Goes By

There are three TV comedies that Mom especially enjoyed: Cheers, MASH, and As Time Goes By.

Tonite I turned on TV and there was a rerun of Cheers. With Sam and Diane. Mom and I would watch together and after Sam would say something typically Sam, I would sometimes say to Mom, as we were laughing, "Mom, you think Sam will ever change?" "Noooooo," she'd laugh, shaking her head. Or Norm would say something typically Norm. And I'd say, "Mom, what do you think, you think Norm will ever change?" "Oh Nooooo, I don't think so," she'd laugh.

Mom and I sometimes watched the MASH reruns toward the end. On top of the TV I have a DVD of MASH still sitting. It's the whole first season I think. I ordered it about a month or so before she died and I think she really enjoyed it very much. And I enjoyed watching these with her more than I can say. Mom especially liked Radar and Colonel Potter: she loved hte old Colonel's old cavalry background and love of horses.

As Time Goes By we used to watch religiously every Sunday night. There were a couple of other British comedies on before As Time Goes By, and sometimes we'd watch them leading up to our main attraction. Mom enjoyed all of these. Keeping Up Appearances, with Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced, Hyacinth always told us, "bouquet") included a crude character, Onslo, always watching football (soccer) on TV with a brew in hand, wearing a dirty wife-beater T-shirt and a baseball cap. This is another one of those characters who I often would go through this little mini-dialog with Mom about ... "Mom, what do you think, will Onslo ever change ...?" "Oh, no, no, I don't think so," she'd laugh.

What did all these have in common that Mom liked so much? Well they were sitcoms ... but also sitcoms with distincitive flavor. She did not like Seinfeld at all. I myself sometimes like Seinfeld, but can see what I think kept it from Mom's affections ... and really keep it from mine. The British comedies have this strong, distinctive "English" context. MASH had not only a very distinctive context, but one with a range of things Mom could "relate to" from her past: overseas, full of privation and danger. Dark humor ... Mom didn't deploy it herself much, but she really could enjoy dark humor, as in MASH, very much. And Cheers ... with that extraordinary basically one-room set ... a Boston pub with the warm wooden glows and golden brass and place full of displaced characters ... all of these had strong sense of context.

But there's something else I think really characterize the kind of humor in the sitcoms she likes. They all have a heart: a big heart. Again, contrast Seinfeld, in which all the humor is really "formal", isn't it? In contrast, in the 3 sitcoms Mom especially loved, there is a strong current of caring underlying the humor. And for Mom, this combo of humor with a heart is what makes these sitcoms especially appealing to her.

And to me.

I love you and miss you Momma ...

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Bruno