A Reassuring Connection in Nostalgia TV

I’ve made a rather comforting discovery recently. I’ve realized, after too many hours in front of the television, that if I stay tuned to the right channels, I can spend as much time as I want living in the past.

I’m not suggesting it as a way of life, but with so many cable networks mining niche markets by taking a greatest-hits approach to programming, it is not only possible but surprisingly easy.

I’m not that averse to staying in the present or looking toward the future. It’s just that the past--my past, in particular--is so linked to television that I find its constant presence reassuring.

Television did a lot, for better or for worse, to define me and much of my generation. The opportunity to look back, to remember and re-experience even as life propels us forward, seems like an enviable gift. TV Land, you might say, is my land.

With just a click, I can return to my childhood, maybe even hit the floor and lie on my belly while watching the Cartoon Network.

It was during a recent late-night viewing of “ToonHeads”--one of the network’s highest-rated shows, focusing on the “golden age” of animation--that I was reminded how much I admired and unconsciously emulated the always-quick, usually witty and chronically sarcastic humor of Bugs Bunny.

And if I want to check in on the sitcoms--”Leave It to Beaver,” “I Love Lucy,” “The Odd Couple,” “The Honeymooners” or any one of a dozen or two shows that provided a kind of entertainment security--they always seem to be on somewhere.

For months I’ve been able to catch the still-lingering buzz from more than a “Saturday Night Live” or two past--a decade or two past--on Comedy Central.

And although I don’t watch sports on a regular basis, I have checked in on a lot of games, a few fights, etc., on ESPN Classic. I haven’t followed baseball since the 1960s, and when I did, I followed the New York Yankees. Mickey Mantle. Roger Maris. Those were my heroes. But there were some other legends I took an interest in. Such as Los Angeles Dodgers pitching star Sandy Koufax. I watched him throw a few days ago, firing away in a big game (played in what year, I don’t know) and felt grateful for the opportunity.

There’s the History Channel, of course, where battles won or lost long ago rage anew, although their outcome is always the same. Old news? There’s a lot to be found on MSNBC in such shows as “Time & Again.” And then there are the movie channels: American Movie Classics and Turner Classic Movies.

Living in the world of old movies and reruns is not without its challenges and caveats. Some shows can bring you unexpectedly back to places and feelings you’d rather not revisit, happier times with people no longer with us, nostalgia that sparks longing and a notable disparity between then and now.

The simple, black-and-white universe of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” for instance, where I recently saw Rob and Laura Petrie (Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore) get into a rare argument because Laura was reading Rob’s mail, doesn’t exist anymore--if it ever existed at all.

You can’t smoke, drink and/or find the kind of razor-sharp conversations you’d see in an old movie like “The Thin Man” either. Morals have changed; there are new sensitivities, many of which are not reflected in programs of the past, for obvious reasons.

But with television constantly lurching ahead and life moving ever faster, it’s good to know you can go back.

That you can watch Mary Tyler Moore exuberantly throw her hat in the air again and again.

That your heroes, long dead, can be born again and play in their prime.

That you can look at the world that was in detail and see it perhaps more clearly than you did the first time around. But most of all, that there will always be something on--something you were and will forever be connected to.

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James Endrst writes about television for the Hartford Courant, a Tribune company.