Generational Grafting Point

As Reinvented slowly becomes a tenant and officemate of silverorange, the “you guys are so young” and “you guys are so old” comparisons are in danger of getting tired (who wants to feel young or old enough to have it be worthy of special mention every day anyway?). To the extent that we might have to ban all such discussion shortly.

However please beg my indulgence on a related matter, and that is that I have found the pop cultural grafting point that separates my world from theirs, and it is Remington Steele.

This program aired on ABC from 1982 to 1987. Which were my prime teenage television watching years. My new colleagues were, by my calculations, in early elementary school at the time, presumably well early of the Remingston Steele demographic.

I know all this because at the big blogger orgy on Thursday, I made a sarcastic suggestion that I would simply hang a sign and maintain an office at 84 Fitzroy St., but never actually go there. “Sort of like Remingston Steele,” I said.

The reaction to which was some combination of blank stares and empty looks.

The conceit of Remingston Steele was that Laura Holt, played by Stephanie Zimbalist, was a female detective who found herself in need of a male “front” to attract business. So she hired a British gadabout, played by Pierce Brosnan (revently of James Bond fame) to play the role of her boss, Remington Steele.

Not deep drama, I admit. Somewhere south of Hill St. Blues and north of Wonder Woman. But I was a fan. To the extent that my friend Chris Nicolson and I used to watch episodes again that he had taped on his VCR (he had a rather complete collection).

Two or three years later, the young lads would be 11 or 12, and our demographic would sync up a little more, and after that our pop culture Venn diagrams intersect more fully. Though never completely, as I discovered when I revealed my amazement that all video games in arcades are now killer death games and recalled fondly the days of Tron; that revelation was revealed more with disdain than bewilderment.

Tron… those were the days.