He’s not tuned in to streaming TV

The great thing about modern televisions: If you want to put your fist through the screen, the plastic just shatters. In the old days, the glass might break and shred your skin — or, because they were made of special glass with the strength of battleship plating, you’d just bruise a knuckle.

Why, you ask, would you put your fist through the TV? The news is bad, but the news is always bad. People say stupid things on TV, but this is another constant in our lives. What could produce such rage and frustration?

I will tell you.

My wife wanted to watch a particular sporting event. For the sake of this tale, let’s call it — well, not the Indian Wells Tennis Open, but, say, the Indigenous Cistern Pickleball Open. Step one: Figure out where the telecast is. Paramount Plus? No. Peacock? No. Tubi? Vevo? Fubar? Kweepa? Klaatu? Barada? Nikto? No. Hulu? Yes, but. It’s on the ESPN portion of Hulu. Or is it ESPN2?

Wait a minute. I signed up for Hulu because they were going to carry the, er, Pickleball Channel in 2024. They had not done this last January, when my wife wanted to watch a tournament. I had considered signing up for the Pickleball Channel, which you get as a separate thing to clutter up the screen, but there also was Pickleball Channel Plus. What’s the diff?

“Pickleball Channel provides the best of international tournaments as they happen, with interviews and features on the most-challenging matches and courts of the day! $9.99 per month.”

“Pickleball Channel Plus has the top tournaments, like Wombleden and Indigenous Cistern, which are not available on Pickleball Minus. $39.99. WARNING: Not available in all areas. Picture may occasionally freeze. Commentary may inexplicably lapse into Mandarin.”

A month elapses. I hear whapping and grunting and applause downstairs, which either means Wife is watching the Pickleball Channel or some Netflix movie where people slap each other with mackerels in front of an audience. It is the former. She is happy because her favorite player is back; he’d missed the previous year at Indigenous Cistern.

Half an hour later, I hear a wail of dismay.

“It’s the 2022 tournament!” she said. “They’re just replaying two years ago! The little box for the show said it was live!”

“Well,” I said — and then I stopped myself. If I was going to mansplain, I’d best do it right. I got out my tweed jacket with the patched elbows, lit a pipe and lowered my glasses down my nose, and looked out over them with a look of amusement.

“It’s ‘live,’ my dear, in the sense that it is being broadcast by the streaming service now. If you’ll notice the home page for Hulu, there are many ‘live’ shows that actually are reruns, but are elapsing in real time at the moment. If you paid more attention, you’d understand that.”

A few minutes later I went to Hulu’s page, checked the channel lineup, and lo and/or behold, there was something called P2Live, with the Pickleball Channel logo. We called this up on the TV, and behold (no lo this time), there was the 2024 match.

I went right back to the website and canceled the upgrade I’d just purchased. Error message: “Oops! Something went wrong.”

Oops? Did you, a major corporation run by adults, just say oops, like you’d spilled juice on the carpet? There’s no oops here! Would you be OK if I didn’t pay the next bill and responded to your dunning notices with “Oops!” Oops doesn’t cut it.

I compare this to my parents’ average TV experience: Turn on TV. Look at TV Guide. Is there pickleball? Nope, doesn’t look like it. OK, we’ll watch Dean Martin. Four hours later: Turn off TV.

And it was free. Somehow we’ve maneuvered ourselves into a situation where we pay a $100 a month for an infinite amount of things we do not want to watch or cannot remember if we watched or started to watch but forgot, and then we pay $10 more to watch the thing we want to watch now.