Loading...MeTV is a television channel that shows classic shows*. Jonsin’ for some Brady Bunch? MeTV. Hankering for the original Hawaii 5-0? Book ‘em, Dano, and watch MeTV. Don’t feel like going past channel 3 on the U-Verse guide? Well, then you are wasting money on extraneous channels. Whatever the case, MeTV is there for you. It’s for nostalgia-minded folks, people who don’t like change and aliens who are just now picking up satellite signals from decades ago. I count myself in the first group sometimes. Yeah I watched a Love Boat a few months back. Sure, it still perplexes me how Isaac can be in the Acapulco Lounge and on the Lido Deck almost simultaneously. But I got to see Sherman Hemsley, Jaclyn Smith and John Ritter in drag. Not bad for a day when I should have been figuring out my life.
Well, today was another day like that. It’s raining. I’m hoping my dog doesn’t need to go out. I have lots of movies on my DVR but instead I watch an episode of Remington Steele. Yes! The show that kept Pierce Brosnan from being Bond for a few years. You remember the conceit: Stephanie Zimbalist creates the Remington Steele character for her agency because she wasn’t being taken seriously as a woman detective (Thank goodness those days are over! Amirite, ladies? <sad trombone>). Brosnan shows up, says he’s Remington Steele and together they solve mysteries. It was another of those “Will they? Won’t they?” shows. Well, they will apparently because the episode today ended with the two of them cuddling by the fire. It ends with an awkward “Is that your foot on my leg?” Giggle. Kiss. Black out. Henry Mancini outro music.**
Besides being a light-hearted mystery romp with lines like “Follow that mourner!” and “Stop that nun!”, Remington Steele also provided a framework for some wonderful basic cable-type commercials. Rudy Guiliani for LifeLock, identity theft security. Genie Francis (from General Hospital) for NutriSystem. Debra Messing for Meaningful Beauty by Cindy Crawford. Which surprised me because you’d think it would be Cindy Crawford for Cindy Crawford beauty products. But instead she is regulated to fashion clips with no lines. That’s a bold strategy.
But the pièce de résistance of the MeTV ads today was The Eggstractor. Why take one minute to peel a hard boiled egg when you can search through your cabinets, find the Eggstractor, remember how to assemble it, look for the instructions when you can’t, it’s not in the junk drawer, we must have thrown it out, oh well, I think you just put the egg in it like this and…? Well, the ad tries to make a case for its ease of use. “It’s Pure Science!” it says. A diagram pops up of the space inside the top of the egg called the “Air Cell” The “peeling bellow” puts pressure on that air cell end causing the shell to instantly separate from the egg. Then you are lucky enough to get to clean the Eggstractor!
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
They’ll double your order and give you an egg-shaped microwave hard boil egg cooker. Which honestly doesn’t look it could fit in any microwave I’ve ever seen.
Only $14.95
Don’t know if you have MeTV? Look for Emergency, Mod Squad and Streets Of San Francisco and you’re there.
*According to Wikipedia, MeTV is a backronym for “Memorable Entertainment Television”. What is a backronym? Good question. I had never heard of the word. But according to the backronym page on Wikipedia, it is an acronym specifically constructed to fit an existing word (and it’s a portmanteau of backward acronym). The example the page uses is the International Space Station treadmill COLBERT (Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill). NASA named it that because Stephen Colbert got his fans to vote in an online naming poll. He must have also gotten his fans to write this Wikipedia page. Colbsome. (Portmaneau of Colbert and awesome.)
**Wikipedia was also helpful with info about the episode called “Beg, Borrowed & Steeled”. How fortunate to come across an episode with a Remington Steele pun in the title? Come to find out it wasn’t a fluke. Every episode has the name Steele in it: “Thou Shalt Not Steele”, “Steele Crazy After All These Years” and “Scene Steelers”. What came first? The name? Or the title? I’m steeling myself for the answer. Thank you! I’ll be here until it stops raining!
