TV’s Elixir Too Strong to Resist

I started back slowly but surely. A “Murphy Brown” here, a “Who’s the Boss?” there. I guess by the time I got to “Tattinger’s” and “Night Caller,” I knew I was on a bender. I tried to take it one day at a time, but by New Year’s Eve I was watching reruns of “One Day at a Time.” The great TV strike was history. I was a Couch Recidivist.

Did anybody do any studies on whether kids got smarter during the TV writers strike? Did SAT scores improve? The lack of TV-as-usual must have had some effect. Did IQs go up the way death rates go down during a doctors’ strike?

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Writers Guild for that brief time when my family life was enriched. The prolonged strike and the delay of the TV season did for our family what good intentions never could. We briefly kicked the TV habit.

All that’s left now are misty, watercolored memories of how we spent our autumn evenings together. My husband lit the fire. He helped our daughter, Emma, with high school subjects. When a guy at work asked him what he was going to do that night, he said, “I’ve got geometry and a vocabulary quiz.”

Instead of hearing my husband yell, “Would you turn that thing down?” I came home one night and actually heard him talking to our child, calling her by the affectionate name we had used when she was a baby. He was saying, “OK, Nucky, you’ve got a convex regular polygon, and it’s got exterior angles equal to 120 degrees. What are its interior angles equal to?”

Meanwhile, I helped daughter Hannah write fourth-grade essays. We read stories on a whole range of mythological characters, from Big Foot to the Boogie Man. We began caring more about Brer Rabbit than Bugs Bunny, Pecos Bill than Bill Cosby, Brer Fox than Michael J.

This is not to say we didn’t watch TV. We still watched Pee-wee because you never know where your next myth is coming from. But there is a difference between an alcoholic and someone who takes an occasional drink. An alcoholic will drink jug Chablis from a cardboard box with a spigot.

Similarly, a teleholic will watch anything. I knew I had a serious problem during the strike when I saw Benny on “L.A. Law” shredding papers for the third time. But when I was still watching “L.A. Law” reruns after the strike, I knew I had fallen off the wagon.

How ‘bout you? Take the following test to see if you exhibit any of the 17 Deadly Signs of TV Addiction. Do you . . .

1--Ever watch “The Best of Carson”?

2--Watch anything before 5 p.m.?

3--Watch anything in rerun that you hated the first time? (“Hawaii Five-O” is diagnostic.)

4--Know more about Roseanne’s kids than your own?

5--Set your alarm clock so you don’t miss Morton Downey Jr.?

6--Feel better now that “HeartBeat” is back?

7--Watch any show where the men tell gasoline-shortage jokes, wear polyester body shirts and sport mutton-chop sideburns?

8--Continue to watch “Moonlighting” now that Dave and Maddie have made it?

9--Watch all three network news shows on a day when the lead story is “Drifter Shoots Self After Holding Wendy’s Patrons Hostage in Small Town in North Carolina”?

10--Tape any sitcom while watching it?

11--Watch UHF stations despite “ghosts” and lack of audio?

12--Consume massive amounts of light beer and flavored potato chips?

13--Worry about what will happen to Vanna now that Pat Sajak has left?

14--Say heavy after a particularly deep “Family Ties”?

15--Mentally undress the talking heads on “Washington Week in Review”?

16--Watch reruns of the original cast of “Three’s Company”?

17--Want to see the Cosby family grow up?

If you answered yes to 10 or more of these, you have a TV brain level of dangerous proportions. Until the next writers strike forces us all to detox, I suggest you seek professional help. Or stay tuned to Philor Oprah for advice on how to do brainectomies at home.