My husband and I came late to the Netflix party. By the time
we signed up, it had split its streaming and mail service. We didn't think much
of this and looked forward to conveniently enjoying new releases using
streaming technology. We are, after all, in the 21st century.
To our dismay, we discovered a dearth of options. Sure there
were old movies, esoteric documentaries and TV shows out the wazoo. But the
latest blockbuster now available on DVD? Sorry, suckers. (That would be us.) It's not that we don't like revisiting classics, having our
minds expanded or following a longer storyline. It's just that's not what we
were looking for. So, we filled up our queue with a bunch of things that we
never really felt like watching.
The only show we could agree on watching was Buck Rogers in
the 25th Century. In our final days before my husband deploys, we've
been watching a lot of Buck Rogers. Why would we waste our time with something
so trivial before such a big event? There are only so many deep conversations a
person can handle as the clock ticks down. Besides I anticipate that what I will miss
most when my husband is gone are those quiet moments just sitting around on the
couch… it's the little things. So, Buck it is.
Looking at the show now, it's very telling how producers
envisioned life in the year 2487. They couldn't imagine a world without disco,
so they re-imagined it to include disco with light-up ropes and roller skates.
It's a thing to behold.
Just thirty years later, our current vision of the future is
so different. Back then, producers created a trounced-up 1970s. Erin Gray had a
multicolored wardrobe consisting of solely hot pants, while Gil's costumes
revealed a robust carpet of chest hair in each episode. Sets were bare, yet
clean, and made appearances in multiple shows barely masked as different
planets. The fighting? Buck could incapacitate a group of 8 guards with a double kick and campy punch that clearly never makes contact. Sometimes he even stumbles. It's so different from the gritty, dark vision and
slick moves of our Hunger Games / Batman / Matrix generation.
One night, after about 10 episodes of Buck, I thought to
myself, "I wonder what Gil Gerard is up to these days?" and a quick
Google search later, I was on his website. The fact that GilGerard.com exists
tickles me immensely, so much that I have incorporated it into my lexicon. A heroically
cheesy moment in the show will elicit a "Gil Gerard dot com!" One of
my husband's zany jokes is likely to garner a "Gil Gerard dot com!" I
love you? I'm going to miss you? Everything's going to be OK? "Gil Gerard dot com."
More than the nostalgia of my youth, I think this hilarious, yet hopeful portrayal is part of the draw. As my husband prepares to
head to war, we'd like to hold onto that innocent vision from years ago: that
the good guy always wins and every episode ends frozen on a smile.
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