Writing By Laura

There really is nothing quite like a weekend night spent curled up watching a fun TV show while chowing down on pizza and popcorn. All while wearing comfy pajamas and cuddling with your furry best friend. Well in my case I have the added benefit of also getting to bond with my parents (we now live together after my TBI). And I am not speaking with sarcasm when I say we have fun watching things together. I even once had a separate blog called “Watching Pop Culture With My Parents” (now a monthly feature on this blog) where I documented our viewing exploits.

This past weekend my parents and I binge watched Hulu’s “Only Murders in The Building” and I would like to spend this blog post writing about that fantastic series and also delve into the supportive relationship I have with my parents (both in regards to pop culture and post- TBI).

I love a good binge watch. However, after my coma and severe TBI and moving back in with my parents my binge watching is less prevalent in my life (this isn’t a bad thing). I still find pop culture that I know my parents and I would enjoy watching together but we just spend less time falling headfirst into something! (Again, not a bad thing.) Well, after signing up for the Black Friday deal that Hulu had (99 cents a month for a year) I put the series “Only Murders In The Building” on my to watch/My Stuff list.

We finally started watching it this weekend and blazed through all 10 episodes of the first (and only, so far) season.

I enjoyed sharing this show with my parents because these last 5 years since my accident life has changed dramatically for us but watching something like this show allows us to step back into the roles we used to have as just pop culture buddies and not roomies/parent-child/caregiver-patient. As I alluded to with the title of this blog (“Pop Culture and Parental Support”) I have very supportive parents. And if the pandemic has taught me anything it’s that togetherness is complicated. While we can’t be together with groups of people the groups we are with (family) sometimes don’t see all the pretty sides to our personalities. Because when a lot of your interactions are one-dimensional (Zoom, etc.) it’s the three dimensional interactions that get a little flat (see what I did there?!). And if you can’t add some fun back into your current predicament than you really are in trouble. My parents and I still have plenty of fun even though we can drive each other nuts and watching a show together made us remember that.

On a personal note, my little ❤️ went a flutter during the seventh episode of “Only Murders…” because it was largely silent and done using American Sign Language (ASL). (For those who don’t know my story, when I experienced a severe TBI I was deaf for three months and now have very limited and compromised hearing. I don’t sign (ASL) but I am very motivated to learn as I know it slightly and would love to be fluent.) This Variety article (spoiler free) discusses the particulars of the ASL episode (which is Season 1, Episode 7 “The Boy in 6B”) This Salon article also discusses it albeit with spoilers.

Monthly Feature of the Week: Pop Culture Recommendation: “Only Murders in the Building”

Part of the reason we were able to watch a whole season in a weekend was that the episodes were only a half hour (roughly) and the season was only ten episodes long. If you would like to learn more about the show I did find some articles although some spoil major plot points if you haven’t watched it yet.

Digital Spy Article (Warning! Major Spoilers!)

Elle Article on Season 2 (WARNING! Major spoilers)

Variety Article on Season 2, interview with Selena Gomez (WARNING: Major Spoilers!)

My Review: My parents and I really enjoyed it. We all got different things out of it. Since I used to be a True Crime podcast listener (before the accident that took my usable hearing) I enjoyed that aspect of it. The show winked at, made fun of and celebrated true crime podcasts and our societal obsession with true crime. My parents didn’t get all that out of it but that didn’t make their experience any less enjoyable. They loved the writing and humor and had a lot of fun watching Steve Martin, Martin Short and Nathan Lane.

#MemoirMonday Monthly Focus: Discussion of the Week- Outline

Note: If you’re new to my blog, I am working on writing a memoir about recovering from a severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and coma that I experienced in September 2016. Each Monday (or really just each week) I focus on a different area of writing my memoir in a weekly blog post I call “#MemoirMonday.” You can read more about my memoir on my dedicated Memoir Monday page.

Since I am actually not releasing this blog until Tuesday (oops) it’s actually already February, which moves us into “Writing of 1st Half of Memoir.” I had a two and a half our Meetup meeting with a new writing group on Monday and that prevented me from getting the blog out for #MemoirMonday. However, the new writing group was incredible and really started to help me shape my writing. This is definitely a good thing as I move into the thick of writing.

Daily Doodle Weekly Project Highlight

A Selby Sweetie Conclusion