I just have to get back into the groove. Of everything.
So the gross details of my absence are thus: I think I haven’t thrown up in ten years. So a total body evacuation was a bit of a surprise. Ahem. Without converting this all into nightmare fuel, the whole terrible situation sort of went on all night and I didn’t sleep. And in the process of being sick, all of yesterday I resorted to the most the common tactic: just zoning out. My brain went on a vacation – I know not whence – while the body ached and shivered and shook.
Today, I was on the edge of being able to make it into work, so I elected to text the boss. More than anything the problem was the detached mentality floating five hundred miles to the west of my head. nd so I slept till noon, rolled around, and ended up finally forcing myself upright for some chicken noodle soup and ginger ale. Oh, and laying back down on the couch and watching extremely an random 80’s movie (The Rachel Papers?) and then a couple reruns of Grace Under Fire.
Grace Under Fire was one of those shows that was in the repertoire of casual family viewing for us as kids. Along with the Torkelsons, Roseanne, Nick at Night, all of those TGIF sitcoms, cartoons, it was an acceptable way to pass a half an hour when I was growing up. The internet was just coming around in the form of America Online and participating in it – though eventually, it became my end-all, be-all form of entertainment – was work. TV was reliable and we would all gather around in the living room with dinner to laugh at the same thing.
I didn’t and don’t know all that much about actress and comedian Brett Butler’s addiction and breakdown that lead to the show’s cancellation. Maybe she’s evil. She might well be evil. Probably not. Further, I’m probably not going to watch so much of it to care at a degree greater than a gently empathetic concern for my fellow human, but man, it does seem sad to me that her talents here aren’t still lauded.
When I was a girl, I didn’t understand how great parts of Grace Under Fire were. Really, I think Gilmore Girls might count it amongst its predecessors in terms of razor-sharp dialogue delivered in rapid-fire quip form. And yet, there’s a sincerity to her performance that makes clear why you’d want to give this woman a show. You want to see her succeed. Beyond the fact that she talked openly about the impact on a woman as a survivor of domestic violence, she addressed many feminist issues. Her single-momness is central to her character’s reality, not set aside because it’s inconvenient. Poor, smart, broken-hearted and funny as hell, she has this underdog quality that you root for. I mean, you just have to watch that opening credit sequence replete with Melissa Etheridge-style raspy vocals and incredibly 90’s-grayscale to see what they want this show to be…just about Grace and her vision of the world.
I just started watching on this scene where she ends up just slightly falling for the seemingly awkward (but rather cute and clearly well-matched in terms of wit) chemist Sparks played by William Fichtner, and you can really feel her loneliness and ache and fear about the potential new relationship. It has a whole Austen-esque industrial complex romantic quality. Her ex-husband was physically abusive and it’s only been a year since she’s left him and escaped with her kids, so this is a whole pile of problems that she can’t quite wrap her head around, but yet. Yet. The yet that is compelling in so much of the creative work that I find meaningful. I feel like the chemistry is…well, palpable. In that environment surrounded by men who see her as nothing to them or might be interested in her physically but have nothing to offer that mind like a steel trap. How addictive badinage can be – how much trouble. And so, incredibly gingerly, she lets that romance begin. Even though she comments several times that she feels like she’s risking too much, she lets herself go out there into the deeper waters.
There’s more to watch (and you can on Hulu), but obviously, this romance doesn’t last until the show’s over so I’m watching these scenes as a shipper who knows her ship’s the Titanic. This is obviously a healing situation for Grace, and somehow, on some level, I see the lessons in it for me. It’s stupid, it’s selfish, it’s risky, but there’s something real and emotional and alive in her that needs to be seen. That needs to connect and feel love. Something that all her shame and frustration and fury and fear and even that incredible wit can’t talk its way around.
The show could also be so venal and flat-footed and dumb about the messages it was sharing, but I watch the arc progress and feel so certain that she deserves the light, the open space, the parts of herself that he seems to illuminate. It seems so obvious to me.
I’ll be sad for her when she breaks up with him for good (or he with her as will inevitably occur) and wish that somehow they could have pulled a Parks and Rec – Ben and Leslie situation and just seen what they had was good and found a way to write it into the show. I suppose in the first season that her single-momness was seen to be of primary importance and a dude who loved her and gave her cassettes he taped of Aaron Copland music wasn’t going to make for good TV.
Still.
…not sure I was intending to write so long about that. I suppose it could be worse and I could have rifled off a few hundred words about Barabbas which I endured on Sunday for the first time. I just need to make my brain work by generating words. By experiencing and connecting to tangible things because living half in outer space frankly scares me a bit, someone might come along with scissors and I won’t be able to come back.
Steps: making an omelet out of the Easter ham I was too sick to have yesterday. Putting on some Aaron Copland music. Loading the dishwasher. Having my fill of gerund-centered sentence fragments. Another hot bath. Glaring inwardly at the fist my stomach has made. Worrying about my grandfather in the hospital with pneumonia again, though it seems he’s already progressing. Thinking maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Watching more Grace Under Fire.
