Fang hearts “Banacek” and a good night’s sleep

I think it was Bill Cosby who first said, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Yet on it goes. Now The Man Cub has found ways to take advantage of the vicious bug he has bequeathed us. I rolled out of bed at 5:25 this morning and cracked the bedroom door so I would be the first to hear him when he awoke, so The Missus could sleep in and hopefully begin to get better. She was already up. She tells me, “The boy has been up since 2:30 a.m., on and off. He’s on the couch right now; every time I try to move him back to his bed…” She shrugged her shoulders and her hands made involuntary throttling motions.

“Go to bed,” I told her. “I’ll take it from here.”

On the one hand, I’m pissed that he’s taking advantage of the fact that me and The Missus are taking turns on the couch so our coughing doesn’t keep each other up all night. (Believe me, if it had been my turn on the couch, he damn sure woulda still been in his own bed.) On the other hand, working situations to one’s own advantage is a necessary survival skill in this life, and it looks like he’s picked it up genetically from me and I won’t have to teach it to him, so I’m also kinda proud of him.

So right now she’s sacked out behind closed doors and I’m just waiting for that first plaintive wail from the front room. Got episode 12 of “The Johnny Cash Show” queued up – Odetta and Roger Miller guest star, should be a good one. I have a mountain of work yet to climb this weekend, but first I want to finish this post I started last night, a paean to a particularly vapid, misogynistic TV show I’ve recently fallen in love with.

Readers of this blog are probably either too young and missed “Banacek” during its original network run (1972-74) or old enough to vaguely remember it and, like me, couldn’t pass up the $10 price for the season one DVD set. (Well, it was $10 when I bought it, I note it’s gone back up to $25 on amazon. Highway robbery!)

Who, or what, is “Banacek?” It’s what (ahem) actor George Peppard stank up living rooms with before signing on to lead Mr. T and “The A-Team” in the 1980s.

It’s what you’d get if a really brilliant contemporary film director did a satirical deconstruction of everything that was terrible about ’70s tv-cop shows, replete with tanned middle-aged ‘sex symbols’ in polyester suits, fast cars, stiff quips and horny bimbos as far as the camera can pan.

Except, here’s the twist – he’s not a hard-boiled detective, he’s a fast-living insurance investigator. And not just any insurance investigator; he’s the James Bond of insurance investigators. In the opening credits montage, he’s not jumping over car hoods or punching out bad guys, he’s sculling. Lusty babes throw themselves at him like Catholic schoolgirls who have just seen the face of the Virgin Mary in a piece of burnt toast. His confidential informants aren’t pimps or streetwalkers, they’re rich guys who live in mansions and speak with British accents and are always sitting by the phone waiting breathlessly for a call from their favorite American insurance investigator.

And when he’s not berating his dimwit chauffer or rebuffing the advances of nubile, starry-eyed coeds, he’s spouting alleged “old Polish proverbs” to prove he’s so cool he’s not even ashamed of being a Pollack, a motif that is weaved heavy-handedly through every episode.

Is he sexist? No way, baby. He’s irresistibly sexy! Mike Meyers must have been smoking Banacek when he dreamed up Austen Powers.

There’s run-of-the-mill bad and there’s self-parody bad and then there’s “Banacek,” rising above mere badness and self-parody to achieve a sort of Zen-level of smug self-satisfied awfulness.

Let me be clear: It’s the purest of pure shit. It’s the very definition of condescending drivel. It makes the star’s later work on “The A-Team” seem like Olivier doing “Othello” at the Old Vic by comparison.

But I’ll be damned if when I thought yesterday afternoon, “I need to run something [while I work] that will make me happy. Make me smile and not have to think. Life is hard, I need TV that is easy,” a picture of the Banacek DVD cover didn’t float up in my mind’s eye.

Yes, I thought to myself. This will make me happy. This will while away my work hours peaceably and if I miss whole parts of episodes, I won’t feel like I missed anything afterwards. In a funny way, I treat “Banacek” with a callous disregard equal to that with which Banacek treats his women.

Arrogant? Check.

Insufferable? Check.

Insufferably arrogant? Check and double-check.

TV to watch when you don’t care whether or not you’re watching TV? Bana-check!