TELEVISION IS A HARSH MISTRESS

Okay, so several years ago we here at MojoFiction thought it would be a good idea to cut cable T.V. We have not missed it one bit.  Until last night.  That’s when the hydra to our Hercules reared its multiple heads.  And by hydra we mean NBC.  And by Hercules we mean MojoFiction.  What?  That’s what we see when we look in the mirror every morning.

See, last night NBC was debuting two television shows that we like: The Voice and The Blacklist. We like The Voice because there are almost no clunker singers and the interplay between the coaches as they vie for contestants is very funny.  We like The Blacklist because that opening season had some stellar writing.  No, not the plot holes and the violence.  The dialogue.  Especially several of the short monologues from “Red.”  They’re not David Mamet good, but they were pretty darn good.

So what’s the problem? Well, as Murphy’s Law states: “You Suck.  But, also, it is football season.”

That’s right, Monday Night Football.

Didn’t NBC consider for a moment that the Chicago Bears were playing on Monday Night Football? Never mind that it was against the Jets, we here in Chicagoland know for a fact that time stops and the world pays attention when the Bears take the field.  The whole reason God rested on the seventh day was so he could save up his energy to create the Bears on the eighth day.  Then, unexpectedly, Mike Ditka popped out and demanded more and more, so God created the Packers.  Truly, he is a vengeful god.

Okay, we know what you’re thinking: if time actually stopped, we could watch the Bears and then flip over to our other shows when time restarted.  NBC would be thwarted.  Well, your logic is dumb and we’re going home because we don’t want to play anymore.  And we’re taking our ball with us.

The problem was, we couldn’t participate in the Bears time bubble because Monday night is also one of those special nights when, thanks to the never-ending wonders of divorce, we get to have “parenting time.” Parenting time is that magical moment when your son calls you by his “step-dad’s” name because when you are not exercising such parenting time you are, apparently, non-existent. Well, we weren’t going to put off hanging out with our son over watching football.  Or were we…?

No. Why would you even think that?

But we were not without a plan. In the primetime battle between NBC and the Chicago Bears, we were not going to go down without one last Hail Mary.  And so we said a Hail Mary but nothing happened and we were bummed.  It wasn’t that great of a plan.

We took out son out to dinner where we talked about his schoolwork and Cub Scouts and a whole lot about the Barclay’s Premier League. Then we visited the park and threw an Aerobie football around until it was too dark to see.  In traditional dad fashion, on the last throw, we tossed the ball way up in the air.  While our son looked for it and tried to catch it, we ran him down and tackled him.  After that, we dropped him off at his mom’s.

We got home at 8pm CST, missing the entire first hour of The Voice and the first 30 minutes of the Bears game. We played the channel-flipping game for the next two hours, but eventually our thumb cramped up, so we missed a lot of Bears game.  Time may have stopped, but we were not missing the season premier of The Black List.

It was okay. A little too fast-moving, trying to set up too much stuff at once.

But the Bears won.

Wait minute… We missed most of the game thanks to prime time network television and the Bears won. Maybe that’s the secret.  Like all  those beer commercials last year showing America’s favorite sports superstitions.  We’ll channel-flip like crazy next weekend and if the Bears win. If they do, we’ll know why.

It was because of NBC.

The legends must be true.  They didn’t launch their new seasons of primetime’s most interesting shows on that day for nothing.

They’re Bears fans.