Theory: The Lawrence Welk Show Warped an Entire Generation

Because I live in a small city and because of my apartment's location, I have terrible television reception. For those of you raised on cable, "reception" refers to the TV's ability to pick up radio waves projected through the air for free by the major networks and small local broadcasters. I used to pick up two channels: PBS and a station about Jesus. The latter featured so much talk about opening your heart that I thought at first it must be Discovery Channel. Unfortunately, the Jesus station has either run dry of funds or saw fit to beam their message elsewhere, and now I live by PBS alone.

Which isn't really a problem ... except for Saturdays. I'm not a total recluse, but there's the occasional Saturday when I don't do much but sit around the apartment or clean the fish tanks. It wasn't much better when I had a girlfriend - we spent most Saturdays arguing. Just kidding. No I'm not. Yeah, I really am. But Saturday night on the thinly funded local PBS affiliate features a show my grandmother remembers fondly, a show full of bouffants and a watered-down big band sound, a show of nasal singing and seemingly endless rows of grinning blondes, a show hosted by Lawrence Welk.

It is extremely painful to sit through an hour of the Lawrence Welk Show. No one is allowed to stop smiling at any point in the proceedings, which produces a tiring effect upon the viewer's jaw. Or maybe that was just my teeth grinding. The Show was aired before the legalization of irony, which leaves you really wondering about some of the skits. In one, a buxom young woman in a billowy taffeta dress sits on a park bench with her considerably older beau. Her song is about how she likes him because he buys her all the "frankfurter sandwiches" she can eat, and following the final note, she chomps an enormous mouthful of the hotdog in hand. I mean, come on. Did nobody get it?

So today's theory: The Lawrence Welk Show was both a product of and a participant in an emotionally stifled generation that led to the miseries of suburbia captured especially well in Tim Burton films. Those rows of pastel cookie-cutter homes in their bright green lawns from Edward Scissorhands? The creepy pleasantries and country charm of the residents of Spectre in Big Fish? All of this (and I mean America too) makes so much more sense after seeing a single episode of The Lawrence Welk Show.

Just promise me you will not open your heart to it.