Dan Wakefield - Selling Out - A Novel

Amanda LeMay and the programming people had praised its humanness and tenderness and appealing spirit.

“You mean you don’t mind if he jumps on her bones to show the argument is over,” Ned asked calmly, “but you don’t like him jumping on them in the kitchen?”

Stu nodded, making a sour face.

“They can wait till they get to the bedroom, can’t they?” he said.

“No!” Perry shouted, jumping to his feet. “That’s the whole point!”

Archer pulled him back down.

“The charm is that they really love each other so much, and they see their arguments were so silly, they can’t wait,” Archer said to Stu.

Sturdivant shook his head.

“The kitchen is kinky,” he insisted.

“Why, the kitchen is the most wholesome place in a household!” Ned exclaimed.

“It’s for eating,” Stu insisted, “and I mean eating supper , in case you miss my point. Why can’t they just kiss and then go off to the bedroom?”

“Then it’s not spontaneous!” Perry exclaimed. “It ruins the whole feeling of it.”

“The public won’t like it,” Stu said. “The people out there will think this young couple is a little bit on the weirdo side, if they have to do it in the damn kitchen.”

“It doesn’t show they’re weird, it shows they’re human!” shouted Perry.

“There’s nothing to get loud about,” Archer cautioned him.

Stu turned to Perry and stared.

“I understand you’re from back East,” he said.

“I live in Vermont,” Perry admitted.

“In fact,” Stu went on, “all of you people are from the New York area, isn’t that so?”

“As a matter of fact, I grew up in Minnesota,” Ned Gurney said. “Is that any better?”

Ned was getting hot under the collar.

“It isn’t a matter of better or worse,” Stu explained. “It’s just a fact that intellectuals from back East don’t really understand how the real people feel about these things. And it’s our job to see that we don’t offend them.”

“My God, this is the nineteen-eighties!” said Ned. “You have everything on TV—you even have incest.”

“Not in the kitchen we don’t!” said Stu, standing up.

“Besides, I understand this may be an eight o’clock show. That’s a family hour. We have to be especially careful. We have a special responsibility to the children of this country.”

Archer stood up.

“We didn’t know they were thinking of us for eight o’clock, Stu. We appreciate your concerns, and we’ll of course cooperate in every way we can.”

Ned and Perry rose glumly, murmuring, and Stu got up to walk them to the door.

“Don’t worry, boys. We’re not prudes over here, we’ll get along fine.”

He slung a comradely arm over the slumping shoulders of Ned and Perry.

“Say, you boys hear the one about the traveling salesman who stopped at the farm where the daughter kept a pet giraffe in the barn?”

Obediently, they listened.

Loudly, they laughed.

Outside, they cringed.

For the first time since he started working on the show, Perry wanted a drink. He did not have in mind a fine Chardonnay with a delicate nose and amusing bouquet. He was thinking more of a water glass filled with straight gin.

From the fuming looks of Archer and Ned, he figured they might for a moment forget their higher tastes and join him. It was only eleven in the morning, but maybe they could find one of those dark, anonymous, funky bars, air-cooled and stinky with last night’s booze, and quietly tie one on. Maybe they’d decide to give it all up and go buy a small newspaper on the Cape.

They walked down the sterile hallway in stony silence, and once inside the elevator, Perry jabbed for the lobby button, anxious to get on the road to his imagined oasis. But Archer brushed his hand aside and poked the button for ten—the top floor, the executive floor.

“What are we going to do?” Ned Gurney asked, “jump?”

“We’re going to get an explanation from Amanda LeMay,” Archer said grimly.

“You mean about why a young married couple can’t make love in the kitchen?” Perry asked.

Ned snorted.

“I’m sure as far as Amanda’s concerned, they could make it on top of the refrigerator. Or in the sink, for that matter. That’s not the problem.”

Archer grunted as the elevator reached ten.

“The problem is,” he said, “we’ve given them a sophisticated, adult show, a quality show for an intelligent, educated audience, and now they’re planning to shove it into a family-viewing slot. It’s going to tie our hands behind our back, besides giving us the wrong audience. They’re going to bury us.”

“We’re going to nurture you,” Amanda said.

Her eyes were large and warm, almost moist from the intensity of her assurance. She stood up and moved from behind her desk toward where Archer, Ned, and Perry sat facing her. She was wearing a loose dress with long, puffy sleeves, but cut low in front, showing the ample breasts that now seemed to be rising and falling with her heartbeat, her emotion. She seemed like an earth mother, strong and protective.

“A show like yours,” she said, “is unique, special, a bit fragile. You need to be nurtured.”

She extended her arms, and for a moment Perry had the feeling she was going to come a little closer and bury his head against her heaving breast, and he averted his eyes in flushed embarrassment, fearing if she did what he fantasized, he would hurl his arms around her waist and clutch her to him, crying, “Mama, make it all right!” To his relief, however, she turned to Archer.

“Our strategy now is to put you on after the season starts, Sunday night at eight. You’ll be against ‘Danny, the Golden Dolphin,’ and ‘Little Asian Rascals,’ a new sitcom about a group of Vietnamese orphans who live on a catamaran in Newport Beach, looked after by a retired Air Force general and his deaf-mute daughter. Danny’s been on for four years and he’s starting to slip. The new show is very iffy—we don’t think the Vietnamese kids will draw in Middle America.”

“Still, that’s traditionally a family hour,” Archer argued.

“Our testing has shown that you have a great appeal to teenagers,” Amanda said. “It’s the old story of young people wanting to know what the big kids do—what they’ll be emulating in only a few years. Research shows you can build a real following in this slot—a following that will grow up with your show, mature with it, and eventually move with it into a later time slot.”

“That’s awfully far down the road,” Ned Gurney said uneasily.

“ Exactly ,” Amanda said. “That’s how much faith we have in ‘The First Year’s the Hardest.’ We see it as a slowly building staple, something that will work itself into the American grain, like ‘The Waltons,’ like ‘Happy Days.’ That’s why we’re going to do all we can to nurture it.”

She not only smiled, she glowed, with the pride of a loving and dedicated mother.

Archer stood up.

“Thank you,” he said.

He shook her hand and Ned and Perry followed suit, smiling and nodding as they filed out of her office. Just at the door Amanda called out “Gentlemen!” They whipped around to see her give them a big conspiratorial wink.

“Watch the trades tomorrow,” she said.

Not only the trades had the story, it was the lead piece in the Entertainment section of the L.A. Times . It was the highly regarded annual report of Dexter, Schuman, Glass and McGillicuddy, evaluating the networks’ new shows of the upcoming season, and predicting those that might be real winners in the race for the ratings.

“The First Year’s the Hardest” was singled out as “fresh and appealing, the most original young domestic drama to come down the pike in many a moon.” The prognosticators especially praised the “crackling dialogue” of prize-winning story writer Perry Moss, the “sensitive, nuance-rich pastoral direction of former Off-Broadway firecracker Kenton Spires,” and credited the “mid-eighties aura” as well as the general high quality and production values of the show to executive producer Ned Gurney, another prestigious transplant from the East.