Like many of the best lessons in my life, this TV feeling came from the B plot of a sitcom and became a foundation of my writing process (and life). I am, in fact, applying this lesson as I work on the entire project of My TV Feelings which means you get to see a TV feeling in action. Beep beep!
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Caroline in the City was an NBC sitcom that ran from 1995 to 1999 which was almost perfectly timed to my high school career. (Class of 2000: Go Owls.) It was an ideal program for me in that it featured grownups, a perfect apartment, and stakes that did not overwhelm me with anxiety.
The titular Caroline was an artist with a semi-autobiographical comic strip about her life [in the city] that ran in newspapers across the country. She had a one-sided rivalry with Kathy, Fruitopia in the fridge, and had moved from Wisconsin to New York to make it big. And she did!
Her colleague Richard was an artist who made abstract paintings for which he struggled to find an audience. He needed to pay his bills and, as seen in the pilot episode, had taken a job with Caroline as her comics colorist despite their disparate disciplines. Richard had a dry sense of humor, and Caroline was walking sunshine. We were teed up from the start for some solid banter and ribbing.
While I enjoyed said banter and ribbing and was invested in the interpersonal relationships, I truly loved seeing their artistic lives and studio spaces. I would have gladly watched an episode solely dedicated to studio tours, no plot necessary. There is a direct line from me watching Caroline in the City to me watching every PBS art documentary in their catalog.
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The origin of this TV feeling is in the episode called “The Perfect Streak” from the second season. It was broadcast in January of 1997 which means this TV feeling’s pearl anniversary is in seven months. (No gifts, please.)
In the episode, Richard obtained a marble slab from a man whose ex left it in his apartment along with a mountain of devastation. He had put out the call: if Richard could move it, it was his for free. Since one should never turn down a free slab of marble worth many thousands of dollars, Richard showed up with a dolly and a plan: He would work on it in Caroline’s living room because she had the larger place and he couldn’t chance angering his neighbors.
The marble slab was all possibility, and Richard was eager to work with this ancient form. We did not see his process, but we heard the loud banging and chiseling all the night from Caroline’s bedroom as she, preoccupied with a situation with her boyfriend, lay awake. Notably, she was undisturbed by the sounds of Richard’s art-making which goes to show 1.) How preoccupied she was, and 2.) Her respect for Richard’s dedication to his art.
In the morning, Caroline returned to her living room to see it covered with large chunks of marble. Assuming it to be an abstract work, she tip-toed her way into a compliment before Richard told her that he had failed: he had not made a sculpture. Well, not the one he wanted. He had planned on creating a statue of Electra, a tragic character of The Oresteia, but it wasn’t quite right. He kept going and going until he chiseled it down to a small horse figurine just a few inches tall.
Richard had precisely created the knight chess piece.
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For the past couple decades, the lesson of Richard and the marble has served as a tool to navigate my overthinking and dread. As the project of My TV Feelings probably indicates, I am someone with a lot of feelings and thoughts about those feelings and thoughts about my thoughts about those feelings. I have been known to make a weighted Pros and Cons list so that I can make the most reasonable decision, then throw out the list because the metrics are not sound.
“Remember Richard and the marble” is practical guidance. It is active: Put down the chisel and mallet. It is okay if it isn’t perfect: nothing is. Except this allegory.
When I rewatched the episode a few years ago, a new lesson stood out to me, one that can encompass the initial TV feeling but is a gentler approach to the impulse to overthink. This is what is great about TV feelings: the layers.
It is, of course, funny that Richard took a massive, incredibly expensive slab of marble and chiseled it down to a small chess piece. And it is also wonderfully subversive. Marble is the medium for sculptures of historical figures and story. It is for fountains and fancy rooms—a marker of wealth and status. Richard recontextualizes the chess piece, places it alongside these imposing sculptures. He refuses the grand and instead invites us to see the art of the everyday, as well as make a work of art accessible to those who would not be able to afford a sculpture of Electra in their small studio apartment (ahem).
It is the sort of project the Richard of the pilot episode would love; he just needed a perspective shift.
Step back a bit. You did not make what you intended, but you certainly made something. What is that new something expressing? Go from there.
My TV Feelings 