Category: TV shows

Old Tape has Me Dancing in my Den

If you can’t name these artists, you’re probably too young to remember them–or what came before DVDs

Sammy! Liza! Frank! 

Once upon a time, everyone would know who I was talking about, the same folks who wouldn’t think it odd that I watched these once-beloved performers on a VHS tape last night. Yes, I still have a machine to play them.

Home-recorded off a PBS show in 1989, the tape featured Sammy Davis, Jr., Liza Minnelli, and Frank Sinatra. I didn’t even remember I had it until I got desperate for entertainment and started sorting old tapes.

I no longer wanted most of them. I threw away a bunch of homemade tapes and set aside some store-bought ones to give away, but this one I settled in to watch. 

I’m keeping this tape till I die. Oh wait. I don’t have to. The same show is online at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443514/. You can buy it on eBay, and look, Amazon has the VHS tape for $40. Who knew this bootlegged tape might be worth something someday? 

From my late teens on, I had a major crush on Sammy Davis, Jr. Lord, this tiny black man could sing. And dance. And act. I saw him perform live at the old Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. I stayed up late to watch his short-lived talk show on a fuzzy black and white TV in the ‘70s. I bought every album he ever made–on vinyl–and sang along at the top of my lungs. 

One would think I’d be over it by now. I’m not. Last night, I was still blown away by Sammy’s voice and the way he threw himself into every song. I also noticed how skinny he was, how he smoked and coughed between songs. I knew he would die of throat cancer three years later. But I was still in love after all these years. 

Then came Liza, last seen in a wheelchair at the Academy Awards, barely able to speak, seeming confused. But here she is in all her spangled glory with a powerhouse voice that reminded us of her mother, Judy Garland, but also was pure Liza. I knew every word of her songs, too.

Frank was next. My mother told tales of teens going berserk over him in her day. Now, older and rounder, his voice not as smooth, he rode on past glory. He smoked and drank while he was singing, but still. This was Frank Sinatra. 

I knew they were all primadonnas. I knew Frank and Sammy were both dead and Liza was in bad shape. I knew they had sung the same songs, told the same jokes, and made the same moves hundreds of times, but it didn’t matter. They were entertainers, and I was entertained. 

Anyone glancing through my windows would have seen a 70–year-old woman singing and dancing and floating back to 1989 when she was young, curly haired and svelte, married to the man of her dreams, and doing well in her own singing and writing careers. To relieve those days for an hour was such a gift. 

I resorted to my dusty tapes because everything I find on TV or online these days turns me off. I’m tired of gore, cursing, shallow values, and mean-spiritedness, especially with all the tragedies happening in the world these days. And the music–it’s just not up to the standard of Sammy, Liza, and Frank. No “American Idol” can sing like this. Forget reality shows, game shows, and cop shows–give me some good singing and dancing, acting that goes down deep, or comedy that is really funny, not just trading insults. 

Maybe someday I’ll digitize my favorite tapes. Probably not. I can get most of the content online. Meanwhile, on rainy Sunday afternoons, you may find me pretending it’s still the olden days, singing from the Great American Songbook and dancing in my purple sneakers. Call it corny. Call me old. It makes me happy. 

Do you still have any VHS tapes or machines to play them on? What tapes will you save forever? Who were your old-time show-biz crushes? 

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Pass Me the 10-Blade; I’m Ready to Cut

I’ve spent a lot of time in the hospital lately, that is, at Grey-Sloan Memorial, the one where the doctors of the “Grey’s Anatomy” TV show work. I’m fine, just binge-watching seasons 1-16 on Netflix.

The broadcast TV networks offer nothing this time of year but junk and commercials. Weekly shows make you wait to see what happens next. With Netflix, the credits roll, and bam, you’re into the next episode. Just a couple minutes, you tell yourself, and then you watch the whole thing, again and again, until it’s way past bedtime again.

If someone else lived here, they’d probably ask me to shut it off, but I’ve just got my dog, and she likes it when I sit with her in one place for a while.

I stopped watching the current episodes when COVID arrived in “Grey’s” fictional world. I had enough of that in real life, didn’t want it on my TV shows. So I went back to the beginning. Ah, the days of Izzy, George, Cristina, Meredith and Alex, when they were interns, just baby doctors. Now, as I watch Season 15, the ones who survived are chief of this and head of that.

I don’t know why I’m fascinated by hospital shows. Before Grey’s, I watched General Hospital, ER, Chicago Hope, House, MASH, and more. At this point in my life, I have spent enough time hanging around real hospitals. I’m always glad to get out.

But Grey-Sloan is not real in both good ways and bad. My doctors are never as attractive or as persistent as these docs. They don’t work round the clock till they cure you or they weep over your dead body. They don’t sit by your bedside holding your hand. They don’t find your lost family, play games with you, or organize wedding and birthday parties for you right there at the hospital.

The real surgeons I have seen drop by on their rounds, usually when you’re asleep, glance at the chart, make a pronouncement and vanish. You see them in the operating room for a nanosecond before the anesthesiologist knocks you out and again in recovery when they tell you what happened before you’re awake enough to remember what they said.

The Grey’s doctors are all surgeons. In real life, surgeons just do surgery. They don’t push gurneys, insert IV’s, run MRIs, sonograms and CT tests, and work in the ER, the ICU, and the pediatric intensive care unit. Nurses, aides, and technicians do most of the hands-on care. God bless them for their hard work.

Nothing happens as quickly as it does on TV. You can expect to wait hours in the ER for test results, for doctors’ orders, or for the doctor to show up, or maybe you’re still in the waiting room two hours after you arrived.

I’d love to have that fast, caring service. On the other hand, every patient who arrives at Grey-Sloan seems to have a brain tumor or a failing heart. At some point during the surgery, their heart stops. Nobody has a normal childbirth or a normal surgery. No thanks.  

Besides, I have seen what’s going on outside the OR. Too often the TV doctors are sleep-deprived, hung over, or obsessed with the person they just had sex with in the on-call room. I know doctors are used to seeing naked bodies, but why is it that every time anyone kisses on that show, the very next second they’re taking each other’s clothes off? And don’t they stink and have bad breath from all those hours working? Aren’t they tired? Don’t they get hungry? They never eat a meal without their pager going off.

They have all been through so much, it’s a wonder they can even stand up. April had no pulse for over three hours on the episode I watched Saturday night, and they brought her back to life. In the next episode, she was looking gorgeous and getting married. What? The girl almost died.

Poor Meredith—plane crash, drowning, beaten to a pulp by a crazed patient, near dead from COVID . . . she’s always fine. Robbins lost her leg, Bailey had a heart attack and a nervous breakdown, Weber and Amelia Shepherd both had brain tumors. Weber also got electrocuted. DeLuca survived a face-smashing beating and a concussion. They’re all fine and doing surgery. The docs at Grey-Sloan are that good.

Words like whipple, central line, crike, bovie, 10-blade, pneumothorax, sepsis, and UNOS run through my head. There’s actually a Grey’s medical term glossary online. I have watched so many surgeries I feel as if I could do it myself. But don’t worry; I won’t try.  

Write what you know, they say. At this point, I know “Grey’s Anatomy.”

I’d much rather watch doctors curing cancer on Netflix than see what my new editor has said about the manuscript I’ve been obsessing over for the last few months. It’s the first time someone else has read it. I’m afraid to open the email. Doc, a little something to numb the pain?

Today is the first day of summer. I wrote here about “Grey’s” in March when I first started watching. With 24 episodes a season, I ought to have a medical degree by now. Meanwhile, when I look past the TV screen, I’m getting the urge to start rearranging, redecorating, and repairing again. Look out.

What’s your guilty on-screen pleasure these days? Can you watch just one episode?

P.S. I just found out Season 17 will start showing on Netflix on July 3. OMG. Somebody break my remote control. Please.

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Sick and Surrounded by TV Doctors

A bad flu-like reaction to my second shingles vaccine over the weekend gave me an excuse to do what I’ve been doing too much of lately, which is watching back-to-back reruns of the TV show “Grey’s Anatomy.” It’s so old that it’s new again.

On regular network TV, you have to wait a week between episodes. Plus you’ve got commercial breaks to wash dishes, knit a few rows, or talk to the other person in the room—or the dog if there isn’t a person. Now, on Netflix, it’s not even five seconds before the next episode starts, so you don’t have time to think about what else you could/should be doing. The show begins, you’re hooked again, and you think, well, maybe I’ll watch one more. I have to see if that guy with the pole through his chest survives.

This is messing up my mind. I dream about the doctors and the patients—the pole guy, the one with the pencil in his eye, the kid buried in cement, the conjoined twins, the violinist who can’t play anymore, the lady whose arm was hacked off. I see all those open chests with exposed hearts and blood spurting all over the surgeons’ yellow gowns.

I’m not getting any exercise when I’m watching. Not unless the phone rings, which is rare, or someone comes to the door, which they don’t because there’s a pandemic happening.

These characters are in my head. Most days, I’m not seeing any other people, except for writers on Zoom screens. The TV people are a lot prettier and more interesting. I’m fascinated by Meredith, Christina, Izzy, George, Alex, Bailey, the Chief, Derrick, Sloane, Calli, and the rest. Even though I know they’re actors, and I know they’re much older now, they’re more real to me than anybody else because I see them more often.

Boy, they have a lot of sex for people who work so many hours.

I’m a writer. I need to see real people living real lives. Otherwise, everything I write is going to sound like “Grey’s Anatomy.” But it’s still not quite safe to travel or hang out in groups.

When my husband Fred was dying, I watched “Little House on the Prairie” from start to finish on DVDs from Netflix. It comforted me. We all want to have parents like Ma and Pa and live in a small town where everybody loves each other. But the mechanics of the DVD required a pause between episodes, and you only got so many in an envelope. You couldn’t binge till your brains fell out.

This is not my first binge show. I watched umpteen episodes of “McLeod’s Daughters,” an Australian show about women cattle-ranching in the outback. Like “Grey’s,” it was best in the early years before the cast started changing and the plot got so convoluted it stopped making sense. But it was good.

I watched “Orange is the New Black” till I decided it was just too upsetting. I watched “Downton Abbey,” “The Crown,” “Call the Midwife,” “Grace and Frankie,” and “The Gilmore Girls.” I binged on “The Ranch,” in which almost every line included the F-word, but it had Sam Elliott and Ashton Kutcher. Binge-watching is so much easier than actually doing something, like calling an actual friend.

I try to tell myself it’s like reading a book I can’t put down, but I think there’s something more than that happening psychologically in this era of pandemic isolation, and I suspect it isn’t healthy. Check out “Three Ways TV Affects Your Health.”

Netflix offers 16 seasons of “Grey’s Anatomy.” There are so many episodes I could literally sit here for a month doing nothing but watching that one show. Friends keep recommending other TV shows and movies, but my fingers keep selecting “Grey’s.”

I used to stream my shows on my 7-inch Kindle Fire. While Annie was in the dog hospital in December, a friend gave me a smart TV. What a beautiful gift, but I am so hooked.

The other day, I caught my dog staring at the screen as if she was really paying attention. Seriously? Is she hooked, too?

What are you all binging on?

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Watching Old Movies and Sitting Still

Nathan Lane and Robin Williams in “The Birdcage”

Thanks to COVID-19, our network TV shows are gone, replaced by endless game shows, weird Zoom “best of” conglomerations, and reruns of shows I didn’t like in the first place. Since COVID hit, I have watched news and reruns of “The Big Bang Theory,” “Friends,” and “Sex and the City.” I did watch four seasons of the BBC series “Being Erica” via Amazon Prime, then turned around and watched some of it again, but I crave something new. The Democratic and Republican conventions, gag-inducing as they were, at least offered fresh content.

Now, I don’t watch TV all day. I work hard at my writing, read constantly, walk the dog every afternoon, and do my home and garden chores, but there comes a time when a person gets tired and just wants to be entertained.

The new TV season should be starting in September, but mostly it’s not. Production companies have gone on indefinite hiatus until it’s safe for people to get together again. As a musician with limited outlets these days, I feel for all those actors who have nowhere to act. At least I can still sing at church and in my living room.

This has been a weird season for me, not just because of COVID. I have restless leg syndrome, also known as Willis-Ekbom disease. The Restless Legs Syndrome Foundation describes it as a neurological syndrome that “causes an irresistible urge to move the legs or other parts of the body, often accompanied by unusual or unpleasant sensations that may be described as creeping, tugging or pulling.” It’s torture.

This is why you may see me getting up in the middle of a meeting, class or concert to stand in the back of the room or do yoga on the floor. I may be squirming in my chair, kicking off my shoes and massaging my feet, trying to stave off the inevitable need to get up. You cannot sit still, not for five minutes. At night, you can’t sleep because your legs keep wanting to move. Some people call us “Nightwalkers” because we’re up walking around at all hours, trying to get our legs to relax. Sometimes a hot bath helps. Sometimes nothing helps.

Experimenting with new medication in July led to the worst flare-up of my life. The side effects were bad, and it made my symptoms worse instead of better. Instead of mostly happening at night, it was 24/7. At its worst, I couldn’t sit, even to eat or play a song on the piano. My legs kicked involuntarily and threatened to give out when I was standing or walking.

That period led me to try CBD, aka a marijuana concoction which allegedly will not get you high but will make you feel better. I may be one of the few people my age who had never smoked pot, but there I was in the cannabis store choosing the raspberry gummies. The CBD didn’t stop my legs from acting up, but I felt a lot more mellow about it. Now I’m on a new drug that so far works great, but I can’t mix it with pot or alcohol. It’s a worthy sacrifice if it lets me be still.

Read more about restless legs syndrome at the RLS Foundation website, on the RLS Facebook group, or on my friend Judy Fleagle’s blog post on the subject. If you have this, too, I’m so sorry. Let’s stand in the back of the room together and dance.

Now that I can sit still again, praise God, I got the urge to watch something on my TV. But what? Old movies and older movies. I caught part of a 1957 movie with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. So corny. I watched a rerun of “Knocked Up,” which stars Kathryn Heigl as a budding TV news personality who gets pregnant after a one-night stand. It’s dumb, but amusing. However, two of my favorites were on this weekend, “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “The Birdcage.” Such great acting, love, music, drama. It felt so good to just plotz on the couch and go back to favorite places with favorite people. Annie the dog, who follows me everywhere, was delighted that I stopped moving for a while.

There are real consequences of the pandemic—people dying, jobs lost, fear and loneliness. When I think about people dying in hospitals and nursing homes alone because their loved ones are not allowed in, it breaks my heart. But we all crave entertainment, and that has suffered, too. Oh, to sit in a darkened theater and watch the magic happen again.

God bless you all. I hope you’re well and at peace in this time of tremendous unrest and uncertainty. We’ll get through this. How are you entertaining yourselves? What movies can you watch again and again and never get tired of them?

Online series save us from the real world

Mcleod's_daughters_screenshotWhen you find yourself praying for the well-being of a TV character on a show that ended 10 years ago, you might be having a problem with reality. As you wander through your real life, in the back of your mind you’re thinking, “I wish Alex would come home” or “Lord, don’t let Tess lose the baby.” Yeah, yeah, they’re fictional. The actor playing Alex is not really in Argentina, and the actress playing Tess is not really pregnant. But their world is so real!

What am I talking about? This time it’s “McLeod’s Daughters,” an Australian series that aired in the early 2000s. It was quite popular there, and now it’s available on Amazon Prime. The story takes place on a cattle and sheep ranch called Drover’s Run in the Australian Outback. A feminist “Bonanza,” one writer called it. Owner Jack McLeod having died, it is run by his daughter Claire. Soon her half-sister Tess, who grew up elsewhere, moves in. Along with workers Meg, Jody and Becky, the women run the ranch and get into all kinds of adventures and romances. The scenery is beautiful, the people are beautiful, the horses are beautiful. What’s not to love?

Next door to Drover’s Run is the Killarney ranch, where the handsome Ryan brothers Nick and Alex live with their irascible father and society maven mother. They have an assortment of handsome employees, too. The folks from the two ranches are always visiting, borrowing things, helping each other, and getting together at the Gungellan Pub. They also do cattle drives, shear sheep, and fix a lot of fences. They deal with thieves, droughts, sick cattle, and a shortage of money, but they always come out all right. And of course, the men and women fall in love.

The series lasted eight seasons, with 32 episodes per season. That’s a lot of video to watch. Over the years, characters left and new ones came in. Rodeo queen Stevie moved in to take Claire’s place. Tess and Nick moved to Argentina. Cousins Grace, Jaz and Regan moved in and out and back in again. Meg went off to write a book; Moira moved in. Toward the end, viewers complained that it was too much of a soap opera. Agreed. But by then I was so hooked, I took a morning off to watch the last two episodes. I couldn’t wait all day.

I didn’t want to risk finding out what was going to happen until I had seen it all. Early on, I looked up one of the actors and found out something terrible was going to happen. No! I don’t want to know these things in advance. So yesterday, after I watched the end, clutching my dog for fear the good guys would be killed at the last minute, I prowled the net looking things up. I learned that most of the cast changes happened because the actors decided to leave. I learned that the show waned in popularity the last two seasons. The “where are they now” features were unsettling. Everybody looked different. Wait, is that Stevie on an episode of Baywatch? Where’s her cowboy hat and red hair?

I had it bad. It was not the first time. Ask me about “Downton Abbey” or the “Gilmore Girls.” Or “Offspring,” another Aussie series.

I don’t have a “smart” TV. I watch these things on my Kindle Fire tablet. Yeah, it’s small. I forget that after a few minutes. Annie and I curl up on the love seat, and the hours go by. Unlike dramas on the broadcast networks, where you watch one episode and then wait a week for the next, I can watch one after another. There are no commercials. If I need a break, I can pause the video. But I don’t want to.

Am I addicted? Probably. But my doctor says I can’t drink, I don’t want to do drugs, and I don’t have much of a social life, so it’s a safe outlet.

Things have been crazy in my real life lately. My father’s condition is getting worse by the day. After trying to talk with him on the phone every night, I’m usually frustrated because his hearing is so bad he misses most of what I say, and there’s not much I can do. I can’t fix his legs that don’t work anymore. I can’t improve the care or the food or heal his wounds. Nor can I be with him every day. I’ll be heading back to San Jose next week. Meanwhile, I send myself to Drover’s Run, where no one is ever alone, help is always on the way, and you can always count on your “mates.”

When trouble at work is keeping me awake, I send my mind off to Stevie and Alex’s wedding. The horses, the gowns, the vows; was there ever anything so beautiful? When I despair of getting enough pre-orders for my upcoming book (Gravel Road Ahead, order here), I think about how Meg’s book got published so easily. Soon she was signing copies all over the country. I can be like Meg.

Fiction.

Thank God for made-up stories that make us feel better. What makes the TV networks think we want to watch game shows and reality shows all summer? We don’t. Please, take us away from reality for a while.

When I write fiction, it takes me away. I can create my own Oregonian version of Drover’s Run. I guess I did that with my novel Up Beaver Creek. And now that I have left Drover’s Run, I think maybe my time was not wasted. I have some new ideas for PD and her friends.

I need to take a break from the videos for a while to clear my head and write my own stories, but I know I’ll get hooked on another series.

What about you? What shows do you binge-watch? Can you watch one episode and move on? Is it okay to escape reality this way for a while? Come on, share your guilty video pleasure.

 

Why Do I Care Who Won ‘American Idol’?

I don’t like TV reality shows. I’d much prefer a well-scripted drama, but there aren’t many of those on network TV anymore. So I watch reality shows, and I get hooked, hooked to the point that I will put the finale on my calendar and turn off my phones to avoid interruptions. My favorite used to be “Survivor” until the show became more about alliances and voting strategies than survival. Hey, is that castaway wearing makeup?

I have watched far too much of “Dancing with the Stars,” even though I can’t stand the judges. When a celebrity who was a lousy dancer won last time, I lost heart. When Derrick and Mark and Max quit, well, what was the point?

What? You don’t know who these people are? Where have you been?

I watch “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette,” even “Bachelor in Paradise.” The whole point of this franchise, besides making oodles of money, is getting young good-looking people to couple up. They’re immature, their words are scripted, and they make out constantly. If they survive to the finale, the couples get to shack up in the “fantasy suite,” where we assume they have sex. Maybe they just talk or play board games until the producers bring in breakfast and tell them to snuggle in bed for the cameras.

People get engaged at the end of the Bachelor/Bachelorette season, but the relationship hardly ever lasts because it’s a ridiculous way to meet a life partner. It’s sleazy, and most of the competitors are idiots, but I keep watching. Tonight I’ll be on my couch watching “Hannah B.” go on her first dates with the guys who survived last week’s initial rose ceremony. The previews promise “drama” in the house—a bunch of guys squabbling. Why do I watch this garbage?

Which brings us to “American Idol.” At least on talent shows, the contestants have to do something besides look pretty. And that grabs my interest. I sing, too. I’m way too old to compete, I don’t like most of today’s pop music, and the whole thing is just not my style, but I watch these singing kids, ages 16 to 27, and I listen to the celebrity judges gush over performances that are mostly so-so. Sometimes I scream at the TV: What? You liked that? It was terrible. They don’t hear me. All I can do is download the memory-sucking “American Idol” app on my phone and vote. Up to 10 votes per contestant. The person I vote for usually loses.

Last night was the “American Idol” finale. At three hours, it was about an hour too long, the final hour filled with “stars” I never heard of. Madison sang her brains out on Lady Gaga’s “Shallow” and then got eliminated, leaving Alejandro, the Latino musical genius, and Laine, the cute guitar-playing white guy. As usual, the guitar-playing white guy won. He sang his new single surrounded by the other contestants as confetti fell all over everyone. Will we ever hear of him again? Maybe. Some of the losers will probably be bigger stars. It would have been nice to have a songwriting Latino win. Oh well.

I didn’t take the phones off the hook this time. Too much family drama going on. But I ate dinner in front of the TV, and when I had to take a break to call my dad in the nursing home, I set up the TV to record so I wouldn’t miss a minute. When Dad said he had company and asked if I could call back later, I thought sweet, back to my show.

I know. I’m terrible. My father is more important than a TV show, but sometimes I need a break from worrying about him. If only he would watch, too, so we could talk about that instead of tubes, tests, and physical therapy.

It’s not just me. Millions of people vote for the contestants on “American Idol” and other reality shows. The results of these shows are all over the news. I have to be careful not to look at my phone after 5:00 because the shows have already aired on the East Coast, and Google is already sharing the results before we on the West Coast have a chance to watch.

Such big news. “Laine Hardy Wins American Idol” comes in above Trump threatening Iran with military action, Alabama outlawing abortion, and the fishing boat tragedy making headlines on the Oregon coast. It seems wrong. But maybe we need this kind of silliness to distract us from the grimmer events of life. Or maybe it’s just that I grew up sitting in front of the TV every night, and I don’t know what else to do to relax at the end of the day.

My dog Annie doesn’t buy it. Throughout the “American Idol” finale, she kept trying to get my attention by grabbing things that should not be in her mouth. First it was a paperclip. Then it was a big leaf off one of my plants. Then it was my embroidery, needle and all. She would come up in my face, eyes sparkling, lips smiling as big as they could with a full mouth, and invite me to give chase. Which I did, trading a treat for the forbidden item. She’s no fool. “American Idol?” Annie does not care.

So that’s my confession. I watch reality shows. How about you? Are you hooked, too? Which ones? “The Voice?” “Big Brother?” “Real Housewives?” How much of it do you think is real? If you watched “America Idol” this season, who were you rooting for? Can you even name last year’s winner?

 

 

TV finales leave me with PTSD

I’m traumatized. In the last week, I have gone through so much: gunshots, car accidents, falling in love, breaking up, rape, beatings, standing ovations, singing with Elton John, a C-section without anesthesia, getting hired, getting fired, dancing with the stars, and having sex—so much sex. I have traveled by plane, train, car, bicycle, and on foot. I’ve spent a lot of time in New York, but I have also gotten soaked in the rain in Seattle, sung on a stage in Nashville, and ridden with cops through the streets of Chicago. I have said goodbye to so many friends this week, and I have cried an ocean of tears.

And that’s just on TV. Season finale week, oy.

No wonder I can’t get up in the morning. I have been through so much. I need that kind old lady in the book I’m reading to bring me some of her blueberry muffins and give me a hug. I need her to tuck me in and tell me everything will be all right. Where is she? And where is the best friend who always appears on the TV shows?

I watch a lot of prime time TV, probably too much. Last week, I watched the series finales of “Castle,” “Nashville” and “Mike and Molly.” I watched the season finales of “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Mom.” Oh, and last week with “Madame Secretary,” I almost got fired and we almost had a war and . . . it never stops. On the cop shows, someone gets murdered every episode. Once an hour, we see some hapless man or woman get stabbed, shot, strangled, beaten or poisoned. On the last “Castle,” they burned a guy up in the trunk of a car. And they shot both Castle and Beckett.

How can I sleep after that? How can I wake up and go on with my life?

I have been through so much.

Now, I know this is all fiction, but I’m starting to wonder how much this affects the viewer. How much stays in one’s mind and body as if it happened to them personally? Do we suffer PTSD from all this fictional trauma? Can one’s subconscious distinguish between real events and fictional ones?

God knows, I have cried after happy movies where true love wins when I look around and discover that my husband is still dead and I’m still living alone and I don’t look half as pretty as the heroine in the movie. I’ll never be young, beautiful, uber talented and famous like Scarlett on “Nashville.” My books will never sell like Castle’s. I will never be able to eat ice cream from the carton or drink gallons of booze like the women on “Grey’s Anatomy” and not gain weight. My phone does not ring with amazing opportunities every two minutes. Handsome men are not pursuing me. Reality does not match up.

So I bury myself in my shows. But I go through so much. And now, as soon as the show is over, I go online to read the reviews and recaps and watch clips of the most dramatic moments because I don’t want to let them go. Living on the West Coast, I can read what the columnists have already written based on the East Coast showings. After the “Castle” finale, I had to know: Did Beckett and Castle die? After “Nashville” ended, I needed someone to sum it all up for me because so much happened. Poor Rayna and Deacon. Poor Scarlett. What was Juliette thinking sleeping with the “Dancing with the Stars” guy? And thank God Cole wasn’t killed. It just a concussion. I mean, so much.

Now that the season finales have happened, what will I do every night? How will I live until September? Am I the only one who is this nuts? Please comment. Tell me I’m not alone. Be gentle. I have been through so much.

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