Daddy’s on the Drink Again

Is there a fairy? A drunk dad fairy. . .that tip-toes in, takes the TV changer out of his hand, puts a blanket around his shoulders, lifts his head off his chest, so his neck won’t be sore tomorrow when the liquor leaves him for a time? Is there a drunk dad fairy? That pays for that Chinese food?

– Bruce McCulloch.

Today I’m wearing my Kids in the Hall t-shirt. It has a picture of Simon and Hecubus on the chest, with the word EVIL dripping off it like blood. People often look at me a bit sideways when I’m in this shirt, as if I were some kind of satan-worshipper or badly styled goth. But every now and again someone who knows better lights up with a smile and says “that’s a great shirt.”

I’ll never forget the time my sister and I were watching a Simon and Hecubus sketch and our dad came into the room, lit up with something not quite like a smile. He immediately turned off the TV and forbade us from ever watching The Kids in the Hall again. “That show is Satanic! It’s not right for young girls!” He refused to let us explain that it was a joke. Isn’t it odd, the apparently insignificant moments we remember.

I don’t think my dad would have like The Kids in the Hall much anyway, had he taken the time to watch it. The recurring “drunk dad” character was much too true to life.

I’ve heard it said that the best comedy always has an element of tragedy underlying it. There’s something cathartic and empowering about being able to laugh at your misery. I always liked the idea of the drunk dad fairy. It made me think there must be more than one drunk dad out there who needs to be taken care of.

Don’t worry, no spoilers here

This past Sunday one of my favourite TV shows, The Wire, ended it’s amazing 5-season run. For those of you who have never seen it, it’s a crime drama set in Baltimore. Normally I don’t like crime dramas, but this one was different. As I sat watching the montage at the end of the final episode, two things struck me. First, I found myself cheering at the end for criminals and drug dealers just as much as I was for the cops. It’s a strange thing to feel proud of a character because he is robbing someone with a shotgun. This exemplifies one of my favourite aspects of the show. As a viewer you spend as much time with the “bad guys” as you do with the “good guys,” and you see that there really is no such thing as either, but that each character is just a person living under a particular set of circumstances. By portraying everyone as equally human, the show refuses to moralize. Instead it flattens out the moral/immoral distinction and has everyone living in a kind of gray area. There are drug dealers who sometimes behave in otherwise very upright and respectable ways, just as there are cops or politicians or reporters who are not respectable at all. The other thing that struck me is how, no matter what events came to pass throughout the show, everything in the city remained the same. Even if a king-pin drug dealer is taken out, there is always a new one to take his place. Even when a murderer goes to jail, people on the streets are still being killed. Even when a corrupt politician is exposed for what he is, the corruption is so built into the system that it continues anyway. Not to say that we should abandon the law altogether, but it made me think that, no matter what measures we take to make our society a safer and more “moral” place, it never really changes. One character said “the game’s out there, and it’s play or get played.” They refer to the “game” of street life, drug dealing, and other gangsta shit, as if it is always there. If it’s “out there,” it exists beyond any individual character or even any group. It has a life of its own and everyone has to play. This may sound kind of bleak but I don’t actually find it depressing at all. To me it seems like a more honest portrait of life both inside and outside the law. And if we really want things to change, it will take a lot more than simply making something illegal, putting some people in jail, helping a few drug addicts, or even electing the right person to office. It will take a complete overhaul of the way society works. And we’re clearly not ready for that yet.

Now that The Wire is over I don’t know what to do with myself. Just like when The Sopranos ended, I feel as though I’ve lost a dear friend. I know there are other good shows out there, but I can’t imagine anything being as good as this was.