Bucket List… In Bed

M: This isn’t a look at the Jack Nicholson-Morgan Freeman movie The Bucket List, but it is a little bit of a take on their concept. Everyone by now knows the concept of a list of things to do “before you kick the bucket,” and I’m sure we would all have some very grandiose and some amazingly trivial things on our own lists. This is a slightly different look at that kind of a list.

In the middle of the media blitz over the death of Ted Kennedy, I heard something that got me thinking: while Kennedy was confined to bed he watched all eight seasons of 24, and a few other shows. Most bucket lists are filled with much more active fare. Things that are sure to show up on many a list are visiting exotic places like the Great Barrier Reef or the waterfalls and hot springs of Iceland, trying things you would be otherwise afraid of risking like bungee jumping or skydiving, or driving a stock car or Indy car 200 mph around a professional track. I would also expect to see things like visiting family that live far away, or spending time with kids or grandkids. But when you think about leaving this life behind, most people aren’t thinking “Gee, I wish I’d watched more episodes of Gossip Girl.”

That’s why Kennedy’s condition makes for such an intriguing bucket list. He was terminally ill, and confined to bed. The only things he could do were receive visitors, read or watch TV. Okay, maybe he could have gotten an advance copy of Guitar Hero 5, but Teddy didn’t strike me as much of a gamer. (C: It might be hard to enjoy that without getting up. Now Halo, that I could see…) So he made his list of the things that he had missed that he wanted to see, and apparently burned through them one after another. I started thinking about it, and thinking about what to call it, and thought of the sophomoric little word game you play with friends at a Chinese restaurant where you add “in bed” to the end of your fortune. Thus we have The Bucket List… in Bed.

Now, for my own list, I really had to think about it. I decided to stick just with TV for this list. Looking at shows, the ones that I care about now I’ve seen pretty much every episode (through the beauty of DVR, DVD, Hulu and so on). Still shows like Lost are so good that I’d watch every episode again (well, maybe not the one about Jack’s tattoos). Then there are the shows I’ve missed, but 24, which I’ve seen the first two seasons of, is the only one that came to mind, and by the end of season two I was pretty aggravated with it. Still, it’d probably go on the list. Then there are classic shows that I either saw a long time ago, have an emotional connection to, or missed but wanted to see. So I dug deeper, and put together my list in categories, and here it is, my Bucket List In Bed:

Recent shows:

Lost, Chuck, Battlestar Galactica, The Office, Fringe (only one year in, so we’ll see if it stays)

Shows I missed:

24, Freaks and Geeks (EVERYONE loved this show, yet oddly no one watched it), Friday Night Lights, Firefly

Classics:

Battle of the Planets, Star Blazers, The A Team, Manimal (E: Manimal! Love!) , Star Trek (original, Next Gen and DS9), Twin Peaks (season 1 ONLY), The X Files

Comedies:

Whose Line is it Anyway (US and British), Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Moonlighting

So there you have it, my Bucket List In Bed. Some of them are due to good memories, like Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers, which E and I loved as kids and watched religiously. Manimal is another, which most people have probably never heard of, and probably wouldn’t hold up to my adolescent memories of it, but I would want to watch it again (E: I bet at this point it’d rank as a comedy for the quality of its special effects, but I’d like to see it again, too). Whose Line makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it, even if its one I’ve seen before, so I have to have that in there. There were some shows I debated, but ultimately left off, like Veronica Mars (E: Yes, and why is that?  M: I’ve seen every ep, and after the 1st season it just wasn’t strong enough to make the grade.  Veronica Mars was no longer smarter then me.) and Quantum Leap. Of course, I’m sure I’m leaving things out, and E or C will remind me of them. (E: V, the miniseries?  M: Another near miss, but hopefully the new remake will make the list!) Or maybe you will.

What would be on your list?