Humble Tidbits of Vacuity

I finally got the WKRP in Cincinnati complete first season DVD. I had asked for it as an anniversary present on May 13, but the stores were sold out of them. I found that to be kind of weird, because I didn’t think there what THAT much of a furor surrounding this show’s release on DVD. My wife got a rain check from Target so that whenever the next shipment came it, we would still be able to purchase it at the “1st week released” discounted price. FINALLY, this past Saturday we found it at Target. It turns out that every Target in the Greater Cincinnati Area had only received 4 copies of it and, yes, they were just now getting the new shipment in.

Sunday night, after everyone went to bed, I watched Disc One. Last night, I got through half of Disc Two. I’ll finish that tonight and then do Disc Three tomorrow night. Yeah, I have no life.

Anyway, so why am I writing a post about WKRP? Well, dear reader, I’ll tell you. Even though I was a little kid when this show was on the air, it made a huge impact on me. I knew that, when I grew up, I wanted to work in a place like that. And I do. I found this job in 1986 when I was 16. It was a small company then, only 10 total employees. 21 years later, with a whopping total of about 550 employees, I’m still there. It’s not the same as it used to be, but it’s not a stuffy place which requires professional dress and has restrictive rules about personal appearance. It’s a place that has characters, not drones.

As a result of the show’s impact on me, WKRP in Cincinnati is the ONLY TV show I will ever own on DVD. It’s probably just me, but I don’t see the appeal in owning TV shows on DVD. Owning movies? Yes, because they are a bit longer and you can get settled in with a bowl of popcorn and some drinks and enjoy the show. But TV shows? I personally don’t get it. Especially big, long serials like Lost, Heroes, or 24. When does an owner of those types of shows ever say, “Hey, let’s spend the next couple of weeks watching the first season of 24 from beginning to end?” DVD shows like that, it would seem to me, are destined to just take up space in peoples’ houses unwatched, except for maybe during the week that it was purchased.

So how do I know that I won’t fall victim to that same type of behavior? I don’t. That may very well happen. But I sincerely hope that I doesn’t. All I can say is that WKRP wasn’t an impulse buy on my part. It’s not a favorite show that is currently on the air in its 4th season but the 1st and second seasons have just been released on DVD and I just have to get it because it’s a really good show (a’la Grey’s Anatomy, House, Prison Break, etc). WKRP is a show that hasn’t been in wide syndication (such as Star Trek, Seinfeld, or Andy Griffith), there is a certain amount of nostalgia (it’s been a long time since it’s been on the air and it a hoot to see how the city where I grew up and have lived in all my life used to look and how it’s changed), and in my humble, vacuous opinion, it’s freakin’ hilarious (“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly”).

This post was hand-crafted especially for you by Kevin at 6:00 PM |