Life is made of ever so many partings welded together
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Chuck will be on tomorrow at eight. It's a TV show on NBC. You may have heard of it; most people I talk to haven't. It's been my favorite show on the air since it started five years ago. Except that it's not going to be on the air anymore.
For five years, Monday night has been the highlight of my week (until it moved to Friday for the current season). Chuck's consistent entertainment has salvaged my spirits after many a bad week. No matter how bad the rest of my life has gotten at times, I've always felt better in the assurance that Chuck will be on tomorrow at eight. I've known since well before this season started that NBC had decided it would be the last, but somehow it never felt real until last week, when I told my gaming group I wouldn't be available for this Friday's session because I'd be watching the Chuck series finale.
None of them particularly know or care what Chuck is, but for me, this is a part of my life that will no longer be there. Chuck will never again be on tomorrow at eight.
In October, Irregular Webcomic! came to a close after almost nine years and almost 3200 strips. In the first place, it will always be special to me because it introduced me to the world of roleplaying games. Beyond that, it was there for me every morning when I woke up, and I could depend on it for the boost I needed to get me out of bed. It's now in daily reruns with new annotations - I highly recommend it - but there are no new comics. I'd felt for a long time that the end was coming: the author had achieved one of his major goals by producing as many strips as Bill Watterson did for Calvin and Hobbes, and all of the various loose ends were being tied up. Nevertheless, it was still hard to accept when comic #3198 read "The end."
A little before that, Borders bookstore closed for good, after years of death-spiraling. When I was little, a trip to Borders was to me what a trip to the candy store is for most children. I fondly remember occasions when I would go through the shelves, pick out an interesting novel, and proceed to park myself on the floor right there until I had read it cover-to-cover…then head to the checkout counter to buy the book so I could read it again when I got home. I paid one last visit to my local Borders during its closeout sale. Most of the shelves were empty. The starry wallpaper in the children's section…I remember attending readings on that step…
Maybe you've never heard of Chuck or Irregular Webcomic!, maybe you're not interested in bookstores (or maybe your local bookstore is a Barnes & Noble), but I think everyone can relate to this feeling of losing something you're accustomed to. We take a lot of things for granted, but nothing lasts forever.
By a remarkable coincidence, as I was writing this, a friend of mine (and classmate in last year's blogging class) posted about the new TV series, Touch, which premiered last night. Reading that was a reminder I desperately needed that, while things we love may become things of the past, there is a great deal to look forward to in the future. There may never be another show quite like Chuck, but I may yet find something to pick me up after a hard week.
And, of course, there's always the DVDs.
