My recovery following surgery has been a bit complicated because of 1) interstitial cystitis, and 2) multiple sclerosis. Of course, a pain in the ass can’t just be a pain in the ass… it must be a pain in the bladder as well. Through giving up on the pain meds (which only cause constipation and never seem to do anything to lessen pain; I mean, how in the Hell are people getting addicted to opioids when they do nothing other than make you sleepy and bound up?) and experimenting with developing a better diet plan for my recovery (and maybe my life), I am finally able to pee somewhat normally, have manageable poops, and not have every waking hour taken up by the feeling of knives piercing through my entire bottom (every orafice and the spaces in between) and the sensation that my innards are about to fall out.
Anyway, what have I been watching/listening to during my recovery? Mysteries mainly. Mostly British. These include light doses of comic relief (as predicted, it hurts to laugh much of the time), and offer the greatest comfort in the world: solvable problems. Well, sort of.
There is the occasional episode of Murdoch Mysteries that points to the realization that nothing was made better by virtue of a specific investigation. We can solve a mystery, but that doesn’t bring back the person who was killed, and it doesn’t always ensure that justice be served; in a way, it is the perfect medium between acknowledging the existence of wicked problems and feeling as though there are still things within our control. Procedural drama offers a character or multiple characters breaking down a problem into manageable pieces, and then stitching together clues to come up with an ultimate solution. In a time where so many things feel hopeless, when it feels as though we have so little control over anything, this is the storytelling genre people keep returning to.
I took a mystery literature class in college. We talked a lot about the various sub genres and the formulas that are followed, but I don’t recall us talking about why the genre carries so much appeal. How many times have you read a mystery or watched a whodunnit, and found yourself figuring out the culprit early on? People scoff at the predictability, and still they return to the genre.
I get it now. This is comfort food for the brain, but not an empty calorie laden guilty pleasure necessarily; it is like a hot bowl of soup on a cold day. I think about how readers return to their favorite Agatha Christie novels the way my mom returns to the well worn pages of The Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook I bought for her as a young child. It is familiar, but nourishing as well. Somehow, it feels safe even though there are people being murdered… and I mean really a lot of people die in what are often small cities! There are both professional investigators and amateur sleuths. The British seem especially obsessed with the notion of people entering into crime solving post retirement. Redundancy seems to me to be the most dreaded status amongst the Brits. I wonder if that will change as there seems to be a growing trend to identify one’s self less by career than in the past. Maybe there could be a series developed where crime solving becomes part of the gig economy: “Uber Sleuths.” No one could tell if someone was watching them, going to pick someone up, or merely delivering a hot order of tacos. It would be the perfect fit!
Nearly every time I have eaten a meal in a car, I have pretended that I am on a stake out. That is my preferred flavor of people watching; making up sinister back stories for people I don’t know so as to make a mundane, too-short lunch break seem like something better. It’s not that I want to live in a community where murder is a regular event; it’s more that I want something to solve, but also something social.
Anyway, if you find yourself in excruciating pain, and need something to take your mind off of it without demanding too much mental processing, I recommend some BritBox and Acorn.
It actually never occurred to me that mystery is comforting because it presents solvable problems. I thought it was mostly because it's so repetitive and requires no emotional engagement. The crime is presented in a clinical way, and the rest of the story only involves the mind.
Adam loves mystery. I find it mostly boring, but I'll watch it sometimes. Well, boring except for the first scene, where I have to close my eyes until they're done discovering the body.
I'm glad you were able to take some time to write something and let us know how you're doing. Take care and get well soon.