Recently a friend asked for TV show recommendations on social media. I, of course, had plenty to say in response, but the truth is I actually held back a little. I was hesitant to recommend a couple of my most dear & favorite shows because, well, they are completely bonkers.

This need I felt to defend or keep quiet about entertainment that I actually really love got me thinking about some themes I’d been considering for a few months… the ways we numb or downplay our enjoyment of certain things as we become older, more ‘mature’ and ‘realistic’.

I began mulling over these themes when my husband & I saw Finding Neverland last spring. This Broadway musical highlighted for me the tension people feel to leave behind ‘immature’ things in favor of grim reality. We stop believing in fairies or flying or magic… and at the same time largely stop believing in innocent fun or hope or joy. We mistake the fact that life can be sad and serious for the belief that life is only sad and serious.

I’m not here to pass judgment on anyone who, like the early-20th-century British nobles in Finding Neverland, have a hard time seeing past campiness or weirdness to the fun and beauty underneath. I admit I’ve struggled with allowing myself to wholeheartedly enjoy most things. The cynical, sarcastic part of my brain finds a need to critique, find flaws, point out inconsistencies – even in things I really enjoy. So while my heart is often drawn to heightened or campy entertainment, my brain wants to jump in and point out that I’m well aware this is all pretty dumb.

But I’ve been learning to tell my inner too-cool-for-this critic to just shut it. Because loving things? Is awesome. And loving nerdy/silly/larger-than-life things is so much fun.

So instead of feeling defensive or abashed, I want to take an opportunity to celebrate the fun, crazy, delightfully weird entertainment that brings me joy. Because ultimately it really is about joy. The silly or saccharine can release in us a small piece of genuine joy, bubbling up from the deep desire to experience good & fun & beauty – desires that I believe stem from the image of God stamped on each human. Embracing large-than-life, campy entertainment isn’t something I think we all should do because I like it; I believe these are things that can open our souls to real, life-giving joy in an often grim and gloomy world.

They Got. The Mustard! OUT!!

Musicals are one of the types of entertainment most derided as ‘silly’ or ‘unrealistic’ by serious, self-important folks. This idea that “no one bursts into song and dance in real life” somehow seems to be the end-all of the argument against musicals. But that argument completely misses the point that art is instrumental in finding the heart of the human condition, and art doesn’t have to be serious, realistic, or even accurate, to tell the truth. Musicals are the perfect example of this.

One of my favorite musicals, and one that I think is a great study in why musicals are important, is Once More With Feeling. This episode in the 6th season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer features a demon whose presence causes everyone in town to sing everything and unearth their deepest feelings. You know… a typical Tuesday in Sunnydale. The story begins with what many people think of as the #1 evil of musicals – a large, public song-&-dance number involving dozens of strangers singing about completely ridiculous things, like their dry cleaning. And yes, when random man on the street operatically enthuses, “they got the mustard out!” it’s supposed to be funny. We’re all in on the joke: musicals are dumb.

Except they’re not. 

By the end of an episode in which everyone is forced to sing, the repressed emotions of all the primary characters are bubbling to the surface. Thoughts and feelings, resentments and desires these friends have long hidden from each other are revealed when they have a medium other than tedious speeches & silences in which to communicate. The heightened nature of it all gives space for more reality, not less of it. And nothing about it seems remotely silly anymore by the time the curtain closes on Buffy & Spike’s passionate kiss. 

I love how Once More With Feeling illustrates the point of musicals so vividly. We can all come into them feeling like this is all a bit beneath our intellect, but we leave having been moved and thoroughly enjoying ourselves along the way. We’ve been on a journey that ‘realism’ couldn’t have taken us on, and we’re all the better for it.

Other favorite musicals: Hamilton, Pitch Perfect, The Music Man, Newsies (film), The Sound of Music, Wicked, Bride & Prejudice, 

Completely Insane. In The Absolute Best Way.

Over the past 2-3 years, the TV show I’ve most consistently been excited to watch week-to-week hasn’t been a critically acclaimed ‘important’ drama or a popular laugh-out-loud comedy. No, the show I’m always quickest to watch the next day is DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. This CW show is a spin-off of superhero series Arrow and The Flash, featuring tertiary characters who were wasted on both those shows, banding them together into a crew of misfit heroes traveling through time trying to “screw things up for the better.” (<—that is literally their motto) While the 1st season of Legends was messy (at best), the subsequent 3 seasons have been masterclasses in how completely cuckoo bananas a show can go while still being actually quite good. Because Legends is not a ‘so bad it’s good’ hate-watch kind of show. No, it is a carefully crafted, crazy fun story featuring fantastic, relatable characters who grow & mature more than most TV characters are allowed to… while also featuring a giant, psychic gorilla trying to murder a college-aged Barack Obama or a climactic battle in which all the heroes voltron together into a giant blue stuffed animal to defeat a demon. I am not making this up. Seriously. My favorite episode last season was called “Séance & Sensibility” and it featured a full-out Bollywood dance number set in Jane Austen-era England. 

Sigh
I love this show.

Look, I realize Legends of Tomorrow is not everyone’s cup of tea. My own husband (my partner, my soulmate, love of my life) sits a few feet away as I watch this, rolling his eyes in irritated judgment about the batshit insanity taking place on screen. But I will not apologize for wholeheartedly enjoying something that is just SO MUCH FUN. This show can’t take itself seriously for 5 consecutive minutes, but consistently takes its character & plot development very seriously. And that’s why I, along with many critics and fans, insist Legends is one of the best TV series out there right now. It is 100% bonkers. In the best possible way.

Other favorite bonkers entertainment: Pushing Daisies, anything by Tina Fey, movies: What’s Up Doc (1972), Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Big Trouble (2002), The Whole Nine Yards

The hoper of far-flung hopes, the dreamer of improbable dreams

Though perhaps less obvious than heightened reality or complete kookiness, another oft-derided virtue is that of trying too hard. Skepticism and sarcasm are broadly acceptable among grim realists, but switch from sarcasm to sincerity and most people start getting uncomfortable real quick. Now, sarcasm is like 45% of the way I communicate, so I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. But I am saying that real, open earnestness is also not a bad thing.

I can think of no other TV show that is more in-your-face earnest than Doctor Who. This BBC produced series began in 1963, and currently it has aired for 40 years (subtracting the hiatus between 1989-2005). 40 years! As you may imagine with any story that’s been told over 5 decades, spanning 2 centuries, there is a lot to say about Doctor Who. To be perfectly candid, I have no fewer than 5 partially written Doctor Who posts cluttering my documents file. For years I’ve been trying & miserably failing to complete a coherent piece about my abiding love for this show – it’s just been too much to wrestle into one essay. (But as the Doctor would encourage me to, I’ll keep trying!) 

My point being: I’m having a hard time succinctly articulating all I appreciate about Doctor Who here. But I can’t leave Doctor Who out of this post! It perfectly encapsulates the qualities I’m celebrating – it’s weird and wonderful and over-the-top, joyful and silly and painfully sincere. My friend and fellow Whovian Joel gave one of my favorite descriptions of the show: “it’s very campy, but within that is great joy, heart, and at times breathtaking beauty.” 

Because, yes, if you can’t look past the (at times painfully) low production value or messy timey-wimey plot holes, then Doctor Who may not hold much for you. But… but… it is so full of heart! It’s caring and idealistic, celebrating the best about humanity. As Craig Ferguson says, it’s all about “the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism.” Doctor Who isn’t remotely cool, which is my favorite thing about it! Honestly, couldn’t we all use some bold-faced sincerity to triumph over cynicism in our lives?

Other favorite overly earnest things: Jane the Virgin, The Greatest Showman, Lord of the Rings, To Kill a Mockingbird, Friday Night Lights

Joy can be fleeting in the grim, broken world we inhabit. But it is one of the greatest gifts we have available to us, and we shouldn’t downplay a piece of real joy because it’s connected to something nerdy or overly earnest or campy – something other people look down on. Sometimes the more cuckoo bananas something is, the better for our hearts it is. We all need something to remind us of the innocence of joy, the triumph of intellect and romance. 

I want to end with a quote from Doctor Who: “When you’re a kid, they tell you it’s all: Grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, and that’s it. But the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. It’s so much darker. And so much madder. And so much better.”

Hold onto and celebrate those strange, mad, wonderful things that make life better. Being ‘grown up’ is never worth sacrificing the bonkers parts of life. 

What are your favorite weird/campy/over-the-top entertainments?