Summer TV Review - Swingtown

In the late 90s, NBC embarked on a mission to encapsulate the 1960s in a mini-series appropriately titled The ‘60s. I don’t remember the critical response to The ‘60s but as a smug ironist and unapologetic fan of Bill Smitrovich, I found it to be highly entertaining. Just like Forest Gump was present at pretty much every touchtone of cultural/historical significance throughout his life, the characters in The ‘60s were present/involved in every iconic moment we’ve come to associate with that decade. NBC also gave the 1970s the same treatment and while good, it just didn’t pack the punch of the previous decade and they apparently didn’t see the sued in pursuing any other decade since.

Jump cut to: THE SUMMER OF OUR DISCONTENT – 2008

CBS trots our Swingtown. Set in the apple pie and baseball year of 1976, Swingtown centers on one nuclear family’s upward mobility from an unnamed Chicago suburb apparently stuck in a 50s time warp to the plush confines of Winnetka on Chicago’s tony North Shore where the ‘ludes and chiba chiba flow like Riunite on ice and swinging is in full effect. The family – stock trader husband/father, home-maker wife/mother, high school-aged daughter, and slack-jawed, age-indeterminate son – find themselves torn between the values of their old stick-in-the-mud neighbors and their new, fun-lovin’ ones. From there, you can pretty much fill in the blanks, especially if you’ve ever seen a show about families, innocence lost, eyes being opened to new things and/or adolescence. For me, the show is all about said new, fun-lovin’ neighbors Tom and Tina Decker played by Grant Show and Lana Parrilla.

Tom, a mustachioed, Porsche-driving, Bjorn Borg Fila warm-up-wearing, airline pilot prone to flashing his pearly whites and saying things like “What’s cookin’ good lookin’?” and his former flight attendant wife Tina are the high priests of the local swinging scene. From the dedicated “play room” in their house, to lacing an innocent pan of brownies with pot to liven up a dusty, lake cabin weekend, they’re all about having a good time with as many (or few) people that’ll buy the ticket and take the ride, or as Tom himself says, “Wherever the party’s at, that’s where I’ll be.” Amen, brother…amen.

Being that we’re firmly entrenched in the era of the critically-acclaimed, niche drama, a show based on swinging on CBS has its work cut out for it, especially when the second season of the highly-overrated Mad Men is starting up. If anything, Swingtown is the anti-Mad Men. Where Mad Men uses its era and its related trappings as a sly, wink-wink, nudge-nudge crutch to show you how clever it is and draw painfully obvious parallels to current events while selling the story morally-conflicted, overly-serious advertising execs, Swingtown unapologetically, doesn’t let you forget for one second that it’s based in 1976 because it’s as much a character as anyone on the show. When a scene gets a little heavy, you can count on a rack-focus shot onto or from a can of Tab and/or a music montage to keep the party rolling. There is no work for you as a viewer except to sit back and enjoy the ride. It’s no bummer in the summer, it’s 60 minutes of highly enjoyable, empty calories and at this point, that’s all I can ask for out of a television show.