RE-DATES
One of the best ways to identify the date on which the old TV re-run show you are watching was produced is to learn all you can about automobiles.
If you would rather not be reminded of how long ago that was - the first time it was shown on TV – then, forget
I ever mentioned any of this.
I, myself, like to know. If there's something I remember from, say, thirty-five or forty years ago, then I say “more power to that section of my memory.”
Only a true dyed-in-the-chrome automobile buff can be trusted to do this identification work well, however. They have to know, for sure, what year the so-and so-model off what car had such an such a gizmo on it that other cars did not have and, probably, did not want.
There was time when TV producers used cars or horses to move characters around from one staid setting to another. Maybe you recall, when color TV was just catching on, how producers realized they had an economy device at hand. Our horse-seated hero, on his way to the next scene, wandered though the canyons, past the high waterfalls, across the plains and into the dense forest ... a five minute travel interlude until the action got started again. Urban themes demanded a chase of some sort and the automobiles took over. The written script could be shortened by several pages by watching the car weave in and out of traffic with either the hero or the heavy at the wheel.
Watching TV with an auto nut in the co-pilot's set can be an advantage within itself. They can tell you, almost to the day, when the film was made by the cars used, what extras they had and how they responded to a skillful driver's every whim They know what years cars had high tail fins, when they had low ones, when stabilizers were in or out, what year such-and-such a brand of gasoline, oil or air came in the market and how little they cost then. They know that TV producers, eager to save a few bucks, made trade-out advertising deals with car dealers and distributors to use their models on TV.
You find out, promptly, when your TV re-run was originally filmed, but you also find you have stopped watching and become all wrapped up, instead, in “talking cars.”
Someone ought to tap the car expert's capability of forecasting the future by being so adept at past-casting what has been for so many years. The car expert could be our secret weapon in international plans to out guess everyone else's plan for the future.
A.L.M. December 12, 2003 [c467wds]
