The Life-Giving Power of Nostalgia During Dark Times

The Friday High 5

Hasbro

Every Friday I share 5 things I enjoyed this week. Also, high fives are inherently cool, and I think we can all agree Friday is the bestest day. Hence the Friday High 5. 🙏🏻

Today is November 1, which is all kinds of wrong. You don’t want to hear it, but pretty soon Christmas will be here, and then 2025.

Meanwhile, I find myself stuck firmly in the 1980s. Nostalgia has a way of making things seem better than they were—we also only tend to be nostalgic for good things—but 4 days before another all-or-nothing presidential election, can you really blame me?

So fair warning: This week’s edition of the High 5 ended up very nostalgia-driven. It’s an ongoing theme in my life, to the point that I half-wonder if I should just embrace it and only cover the things that give me those warm-fuzzy memories.

It’s a silly idea, one I’m tempted to laugh off. But the next time I send one of these, the fate of the free world will be decided. And the magnitude of that is making me want to disappear down another YouTube rabbit hole.

Oh! Here’s something cool that happened this week: I was quoted in Wired magazine. As a friend of mine said, I can now claim to be published in Wired. Don’t think I’m not tempted.

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Cobra Kai: Season 6

Netflix

I put off starting season 6 after I learned Netflix was splitting the final season into two binge packets. But now that Part 2 is due to drop—in exactly 2 weeks!—I’ve properly reorganized my life.

I’m glad to be back.

I am of the opinion that Cobra Kai works best as a Johnny Lawrence vehicle, and much less-good anytime Ralph Macchio shows his face. Which unfortunately is a lot, as the series has become more about Daniel LaRusso than the redemption of Johnny. That quibble aside, I love the show. It’s nostalgia porn.

No question, Cobra Kai has unapologetically dipped into the Saturday morning cartoon vibe, but I love it. Sometimes cheesy is awesome. What’s pizza without all that cheese? (Answer: An enormous breadstick.) This embrace of the gonzo was the logical outcome of Daniel LaRusso breaking the space-time continuum, and thus, predestined.

I’m still reeling from this casually awesome line from the second episode of Season 6: “Your incompetence is why I must stay alive.” It’s the kind of thing a proper two-bit villain might say. Like Cobra Commander, which is a great segue.

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

Life is strange.

I was a huge G.I. Joe kid back in the day. The cartoon was iconic. The toys were legendary.

When it came to toys, G.I. Joe stood toe-to-toe with Star Wars. Often I mingled the two because they were comparably sized, and it’s just good fun having Darth Vader and Destro collaborate to crush their foes (before turning on each other, predictably).

How and why I moved on from G.I. Joe is a long story that seems especially tragic with the benefit of time. Suffice it to say, while Star Wars has never died for me, I hadn’t though about G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero in over 30 years.

And then this happened.

I have a lot to say about the experience, which will be the subject of a long-form article.

Now that I’m in my mid-40s, I’ve been waiting for a mid-life crisis to strike. Fast cars and faster women have never been my style, but I’ve also never stared down the barrel of my own mortality. Even I couldn’t really say what might happen. Perhaps I’d do something truly rash, like start a “Greedo Shot First” fan club.

It’s very comfortably on-brand that my own mid-life crisis—if this is indeed what it is—concerns the cartoons and toys of my youth. I’ve even taken to stalking eBay for G.I. Joe toy lots. Forget a Mustang—Daddy needs a vintage Snake Eyes (which costs nearly as much as a Mustang).

I’m totally alright with that.

YouTube Trip Down Memory Lane

YouTube started me out on this G.I. Joe journey when it served up a video about the G.I. Joe movie. And, in a snake-eating-its-tail kinda way, watching G.I. Joe led me back to YouTube, where I started watching videos about the toys.

Every video you watch prompts the algorithm to suggest more in the same vein, which is how I ended up watching this video about the best toys from the 80s.

What’s crazy is how many core memories this unlocked. There are several toy lines I didn’t recall—Silver Hawks, Rambo, Mask, Cops—that I distinctly remembered after the video. And they were all awesome!

This video is very boy-centric (no Barbie, Care Bears, or Cabbage Patch Kids) and doesn’t include a handful of toys I distinctly remember, like Gobots or Voltron. The fact that I played with most of the toys mentioned, and many he did not, proves two things: The 80s were the peak era for toys, and I had way more toys than I remembered.

I may end up writing a long piece about this because I can’t stop thinking about it.

Nobody Wants This

Netflix

We finished this Netflix series after nibbling on it for a couple of weeks. It’s the perfect bite-sized show in both its length (most episodes are less than 25 minutes) and its drama-lite fare. It also openly trades in Jewish stereotypes and nearly every named character is somehow unpleasant. It feels weird to admit it’s a fun watch as the pixels of that last sentence are still cooling, but it’s true.

Smarter people than I have weighed in the show’s merits. I’ll just say this: I really enjoyed Nobody Wants This and am looking forward to the second season.

My chief complaint is about Noah (Adam Brody), the rabbi love interest everyone claims is hot. There’s a gentleness to him that’s appealing because you literally never find that in a leading man. And it’s refreshing to have a religious figure who lives by the tenets of their faith. But he’s just way too perfect. He always does the right thing. I just don’t believe it. They could’ve at least thrown in a scene of him picking his nose or crop-dusting his brother.

I don’t want to say anything about how season one ends because of spoilers, but it’s cheap and dumb, and I also don’t believe it.

The Conners

ABC

I don’t watch much (read: any) network TV because it seems to mostly exist to provide a home for advertisements. I honestly can’t even tell you what’s on traditional TV, which is an embarrassing admission. (My sense is a lot of procedurals and reality TV.)

We have an over-the-air TiVo from the days we regularly tuned in—which was enough to require an over-the-air TiVo—but these days it’s mostly used to capture the latest antics of Lanford’s favorite dysfunctional family.

The Conners has some of the funniest writing you’ll find. It’s so slyly witty. You know the jokes are coming. That’s literally why you’re there. But the punchlines aren’t telegraphed and often arrive in surprising ways. Even if the humor is completely couched in the family’s generational misfortune, they keep finding new ways to tell familiar jokes.

Also: Laurie Metcalf is a national treasure.

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Questions for you!

• Have you ever found yourself caught in a nostalgic riptide? How did it play out?

• Real or fake: Ralph Macchio’s hair. I think it’s a bad rug.

• What fun stuff are you watching?