Nightwatch: Declan Cashin
Friday May 08 2009
To some people, weekends are a glorious, make-every-moment-count opportunity to pursue one's interests, to get out there and catch up with friends and even make new ones, to broaden horizons, to feed the soul with some culture, and to generally restore mind and body.
Don't worry, I'm not one of those people. For me, weekends these days seem to comprise of devising ever more ingenious, but ultimately ineffectual, ways of pre-empting and then battling hangovers and other such self-inflicted ailments.
Having spent literally years researching this issue, I'm sorry to report that I'm still none the wiser. But I can say with certainty that those Nurofen-fuelled morning-afters would be a helluva lot worse if it wasn't for hangover television. Sweet, restorative, cheesy, awful, brilliant hangover television.
Case in point: a couple of weeks ago, I was out on a Friday night for my brother's 30th birthday (or the ninth anniversary of his 21st, whichever eases the pain for him). I didn't even have that much to drink, but that doesn't seem to matter any more. Four bottles -- bottles! -- of beer and I'm up on the tables Coyote Ugly-style. Hey, I'm a cheap date if nothing else.
The next morning I groggily stirred in my lair to find that the cast of Stomp had seemingly taken residence in my frontal lobe. It was 7.30am and I knew there was little chance of drifting back to sleep, so, for comfort, I turned to the TV -- that magical box to which we all outsourced our brains many years ago.
And what comfort it provided. It turns out there are so many gems to be (re)discovered. The moment I switched on the TV that morning I was met by the iconic words, "I am Adam, Prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Greyskull ... "
Why, if it wasn't He-Man himself, the legendary leading man of so, so many Saturday mornings from my misbegotten youth. Already the pain was easing, though I still wasn't quite hale enough to jump up in my bed and shout, "I have the powwwwwwwer!"
Being somewhat emotionally fragile that morning, I almost cried when Masters of the Universe was followed by another, dare I say it, ledgebag from the canon of childhood masterpieces: Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. I was in heaven.
But it turns out you should approach hangover television like you should relationships: don't settle for the first thing that seems reasonably attractive, because there could be something else out there so better suited to your needs.
A quick flick through the channels brought me into the wonderful world of appalling American drama. First up: Falcon Crest, the forgotten child of the 1980s supersoaps, the embarrassing, too-eager-to-please, clothes-borrowing, style-imitating younger sibling of the eternally popular first-born, Dynasty.
Of course, the catastrophic brilliance inherent in hangover television shows is what gives them their healing powers (see also Come Dine with Me, The Hills and Dancing on Ice). With Falcon Crest, who wouldn't feel better after watching a young Mariska Hargitay from Law and Order: SVU desperately trying to play a teenage vamp, or witnessing a nightmare-inducing sequence where septuagenarian Jane Wyman presents Greg's mother from Dharma and Greg with some lacy underwear as a hen-party gift?
The jewel in the crown that morning, however, was 7th Heaven, the cheesiest, most disturbing family drama ever produced on American television. This was one of the later seasons where the non-Jessica Biel daughter is a bishop (or something), so she spends the greater part of the episode trying to convince her creepy twin brothers not to abandon their pet hamsters as part of a lesson about taking responsibility and what not.
Again, being emotionally discombobulated due to Mexican beer, I ended up being strangely moved by it all. And I learned something about responsibility myself. I learned that I now have to keep my end of the bargain every Saturday morning. After all, if the magic box is willing to provide the television, the least I can do is bring the hangover.
- Ed Power
