Full Stream Ahead

I’ve got to tell my husband.  I feel bad.  He deserves to know.  Eventually he is going to find out, not to mention he keeps asking.  Tonight I’m just going to tell him.  Tonight is the night I will break my silence and speak my truth:

“Honey, I watched the rest of The Bear without you.”

I should have known watching together was going to be problematic based on how ridiculously hard it was to find a show we both could agree upon.  The intersection of our content preferences: cowboys, zombies and aliens (him); rom-coms, period dramas and anything Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome (me), is scant at best.  Glaciers formed and melted in the time it took to scroll through and pick something.  But finally, we settled on The Bear, a show about a chef from a dysfunctional family working in a dysfunctional restaurant. [Here’s hoping Munchausen’s might be on the back burner!]

It started off well enough.  After consuming a few episodes, we fell into a routine.  We got comfortable in bed, lowered the lights, and pressed play.  But I should have sensed something was amiss when husband, confused, asked who the character of the Bear’s brother was. Troubling, given that the brother is central to the entire plot and key to understanding the back stories of most of the cast. Still, we kept on, while I side-eyed my betrothed to see if those fluttering eyes were closing. I’m sorry to report that they were. He was out like a light, clearly, not for the first time.

Sigh.  I was so sorry to watch him miss our program that I kept watching.  He works so hard all day and all week and has such little time for relaxing entertainment.   This was his time. Our time together.  Too bad he blew it.  I don’t know if it was Sartre or Nietzsche who said it first but I believe the phrase is “Snooze you lose.”  I avowed to carry on solo, feigning ignorance to his slumber.

But then, something happened.  Like a bolt of lightning, my darling startled back to waking, loosening his death-grip on the remote - as dictated by the patriarchy - and with a choking rattle, awoke!  Coming to, he seemed aware of missing quite a bit and then (again) STARTED ASKING QUESTIONS.  Plot questions.  Character questions.  Timeframe questions.  Questions, questions, questions. QUESTIONS???!!!!  Bitch, please.  I’m watching over here.

“Is that the brother? Who is that again?” he asked.

“No one,” said I.

“No one?  Are you sure? I kind of feel like…”

“SSSHHHH!!!!!!

Alas, the next night, we started that episode over.  I know you must be enraged on my behalf - thank you - and wondering why I’d agree to a rewatch and the only answer is that I am an angel from heaven. And also because I had already watched Episodes 4 and 5 solo.  I kept up the charade with him for several nights.  We watched Episode Three six times. He never stayed awake once.  That is why, dear reader, I am not ashamed to say that I watched the remainder of the season while my husband was out providing for our family, in a single solitary, glorious afternoon. 

Don’t judge.  I love my husband so much and he’s a good man in every way.  Well, maybe he shouldn’t open things with his teeth the way he does …but mostly, he’s such a fine person.  But if you are working so hard that you can’t stay awake for The Bear, I feel it unfair to hold others back, one might even say hold them hostage, stuck in the endless purgatory of Episode Three. I seem to be able to stay awake for The Bear.  To be fair, that is likely because I am on a work sabbatical and have much more free time than my husband.  And it is also fair to say that my sabbatical has been 21 years-long and so I really have nothing to do, any time, ever.  Whatever, whatever.  I still need to lead an entertaining life and I deserve to know what happens in Episodes 4 and beyond. 

And so that’s what I did.  I sopped up every morsel of The Bear by myself, a solo and satisfying enterprise.  It felt illicit and sneaky, like watching porn, or how I can only imagine it must feel like to watch porn.  Because I don’t watch porn.  Like ever.  I mean, check my history and you will see it is cleared.  I mean clean, not cleared!  I don’t even know about clearing a history…is that even a thing? I meant clean.  Clean as those industrial restaurant surfaces that the chef in The Bear cleans with hot soapy water, metaphorically washing away one day’s drama and preparing for the next.  

I wish my husband had seen that part.