Men In Trees High On The Sap Factor

A friend of mine encouraged me to check out the TV show Men In Trees. She thought I’d like it, because the main character is an author (as well as a radio show host) and because I liked Northern Exposure. Plus, MIT is filmed in Squamish, which would be known to most of the international readers here as the location of the mines where all the files are stored in X-Files.

So, I decided to watch it the other night, and it turned out to be a mix of baffling and depressing. Baffling because you’re always trying to orient yourself when you watch a show that’s new to you.

Depressing because of some of the subject matter. Turns out Patrick and Annie were going to get married when Patrick was struck by lightning and now he doesn’t remember anyone, including her – even after sex.

In doing a comparison to Northern Exposure, I’d say the one variable my friend overlooked was the gender factor. NE was a fairly male-dominated show. MIT is pretty female-dominated, and it was probably a bad episode to start with from the perspective of the giddy girl factor.

And at the end, these words from our radio talk show host as they do the montage: Annie packing to move out, Jack’s ship is in trouble off the coast of Alaska (Jack’s the love interest of the radio show host, who spent much of the episode agonizing over the discovery of another woman in his life, who turned out to be his mother), the couple that decided not to have sex but write letters…

“Life would be so good if we could just freeze moments in time.

The time when we were happy, when we knew we were loved.

But we can’t and so instead we find ourselves retracing footsteps that may have washed away.

We fight to remember our connections even as time wipes our slate clean

and we strive to make new connections that we hope time will indulge.

When communication fails words remain behind.

Proof that we were here, that we mattered, that someone cared.

In the end the past may be all we have.”

Kind of show Kleenex should advertise during.