Oh, TV. How I cherish you so. I've invested so much time and effort into our relationship. And you always find a way to repay me.Like the day I stumbled across an episode of the 1-season wonder, "Mission Hill". A humble animated series that provided this gem of a scene between main character Andy, his little brother Kevin, and Kevin's would-be girlfriend Eunice Eulmeyer - also referred to as "Weirdie" by Andy behind her back... until now:
That classic phrase "Weirdie Beans At?" was repeated endlessly by my friends and I for a year or so. It became such a popular response to anything out of the ordinary, that I once remember overhearing someone in our local university haunt use it over a game of pool. I had never met this person before, and it was obvious he had never seen the show.
In the age of the YouTube, I'm not sure this kind of customized pop culture internalization is as resonant as it was back in the age of the plain ol' tube.
I absolutely love how I'm now able to call up this clip whenever I want. But maybe that convenience eliminates any need for us to make these little gems our own - like me and my friends did with the "Weirdie Beans" moment. The ease of accessibility gives way to a disposable relationship with this stuff. It used to be freaking hard work finding interesting stuff on television. Now we're sent links to amazing videos nearly every day. Videos that would've reverberated through us for way longer in the TV era.
It's an interesting to think about this, especially at the end of a year when we'll be inundated with lists of the year's "best internet memes" and "most watched viral videos", and so on. I'd be curious to look at those lists from 2007, 2009, or whenever and see how much we access or relate to those formerly ubiquitous clips now. I'm guessing we'd barely be able to make it to the end of the progress bar on most of them.
