Seeking respite from news too heartbreaking to bear, we tuned into the 2018 Winter Olympics last month to witness the incredulous melding of North and South Koreas' women’s hockey teams, the astonishing performance by the U.S. curling contingent (move over Roomba) and Shaun White’s epic gold medal makeover. Immediately after the closing ceremonies it was time to pick up the remote and once again search through the channel guide to find new episodes of my favs which had been on hiatus, not daring to compete with the blindingly sequined Tara and Johnny. (Who could blame them?)
It has been gray, dreary and raining in the Northeast - the perfect backdrop for the dreaded “Mid Season Blues“. It’s not just my complete inability to recall what happened in the last cliffhanger episode or the realization that I AM WATCHING A RERUN AND STILL CAN’T REMEMBER ANYTHING, but it is coming to terms that shows to which I have grown attached might be coldly and heartlessly cancelled (or, as the networks euphemistically say: “not renewed“).
Sure, some series have staying power so I wasn’t surprised to read that it looks promising for Blue Bloods (love the family dinners and just one more mom left to kill off from around the table) and Hawaii Five-O (could Steve McGarrett* get any hunkier?). More good news- Sheldon Cooper will return to study string theory; we can still count on the NCIS teams to give us the security we are actually lacking; and tissue sales will continue soar for This is Us. Yet the cruel network gods seemed determined to crush my spirit. Last year it was The Catch (5’2” Alice Vaughan running in heels!) and Rosewood (both cool and hot!) and now it is the threatened cancellation of 9JKL.
9JKL premiered this past September on CBS. If you haven’t seen it (because you were no doubt planning to binge watch it in its entirety, uninterrupted with a box of Thin Mints at your side) the premise is that recently divorced and out-of-work actor Josh Roberts (Mark Feuerstien) moves back to Manhattan and into a fab high rise (think: witty doorman, terrace with a view). Josh lives in apartment “K”, right between his parents “J” and his brother and sister-in-law “L“. My mother used to have this dream and my sisters and I would recoil in horror. Oh, the irony of the generations. But naturally my husband and I would not be nearly as suffocating as Josh’s parents - perfectly cast with Linda Lavin and Elliott Gould. No. Not us. We would simply be cloyingly delightful!** We would breeze in and out of each other’s apartments and have rotating game nights. We might even knock down the dividing walls. And, of course, their significant others would find this arrangement perfectly charming.
“Let’s sell the house and buy three adjacent apartments in New York,” I enthusiastically suggested to my husband. 9JKL will live on! The children will move in right next to us! We can visit them anytime we want! Before he could stage an intervention, I set off in my hallucinatory state to scan the Zillow listings and make myself a celebratory “Mom-osa” (recipe to follow) to toast my brilliant idea. Midseason blues indeed!
* If you are my husband stop reading now
**If you are my children stop reading now
Recipe for Celebratory “Mom-osa”
Reach into the scary very back of the cabinet behind the remnants of old sippy-cups and find that one perfect long stemmed Champagne flute.
Dust it off. Fill the glass halfway with good Champagne.
Squeeze two or three oranges. Remove the pits and pulp and discard along with the juice.
Fill the rest of the glass with Champagne and drink. F*** the orange juice. The show is cancelled. The kids haven’t called. The fantasy is “not renewed“.