There we are in NYC, investigating crime after crime. There we are in Stars Hollow, in the café, having pancakes, all is calm.
Cindy and I aren’t really in these places. No, we’re on our couch, staring at a television, the one that’s smaller than most, the one our granddaughters mock.
We’re lost in the stream of streaming services, as we have been since the pandemic. It’s 2026, but it could be 2020. What did we learn from all that isolation? We learned to watch.
We bounce from Amazon Prime to BritBox and all the stops in between. We look for crimes we can solve; we look for love in all the right (and wrong) places.
Most every evening, we fast-forward the news, flying by politics and fires and hurricanes until we get to the bright spot at the end,
the kind deeds that balance the chaos before.
After that, we switch to the familiar world of the police procedural. The music plays. Someone discovers a body or someone is murdered.
The first cop to arrive on the scene looks at the corpse and says it has all the marks of a suicide. Rookie mistake.
Carrie Wells, the cop with an amazing memory on “Unforgettable,” arrives. She takes one look around and says what really happened. Murder. Carrie is never wrong.
“Unforgettable” premiered in 2011 on CBS and went over to A&E in 2015 for what would be its fourth and last season. We missed it the first time around. It’s on Amazon Prime now, and we are addicted.
What sets Carrie apart from all the other cops is that she recalls everything she has ever seen or heard since she was growing up in Syracuse.
I wish she had grown up in Rochester, that there would be throw-away references to Kodak and Gates and garbage plates, but I’m happy for Syracuse. I wish it well.
Carrie’s astonishing memory gives her a distinct advantage over criminal types. She irritates her bosses, good cops always do, and she’s a hopeless flirt. So what, she solves crimes.
She’s also in love with her crime-solving partner, Al Burns. He’s in love with her. But they aren’together, at least as far as we’ve watched
Maybe there will be a happy ending. Maybe not. That’s the draw.
“Gilmore Girls,” which ran for seven seasons until its end in 2007 and is now on Hulu, is our antidote to all the murder and mayhem on our other shows.
There’s cozy drama and silliness in Stars Hollow, where the show takes place. It’s just a little south of Shangri-La and a lot like Geneseo, the small town where we live.
Stars Hollow could use a statue in the middle of its Main Street, one that cars plow into with astonishing frequency. We’ve got that. It could also use a small college and a few strange professorial types. I could name names. But still, it could be Geneseo. It rings true.
Sometimes Lorelai Gilmore, the show’s main character, gets on my nerves.
I like banter, a little verbal back and forth, but Lorelai banters non-stop; she never comes up for air. It’s exhausting.
Still, there I am, hanging on every hint that Lorelai and Luke, the flannel-shirted proprietor of Luke’s café, will get together.
Good heavens, will Lorelai’s daughter Rory find lasting love? I hope it’s not with Jess, Luke’s rebellious nephew, though Cindy says I should give him a chance.
The stream awaits. I’ll hop in. There are murders to solve and relationships to promote. It’s 2026 and I’m a busy guy.
From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott writes Remarkable Rochester about who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Streaming mysteries and comfort TV offer a break from a chaotic world
