We folks at the PBC&R have a confession to make: We have started watching Frankie & Grace, a series shown on Netflix which we know would cause some of our relatives to cringe. I mean Jane Fonda could be a “turn that off” trigger for one person quite close to us. In fact, he might just resign his charter membership in the Foo Bar in protest.

It is not as if we went out of our way to be annoying to some. It’s just that the show was frequently suggested and after awhile we looked at the synopsis and saw the blurb about two husbands of 40 years announcing that they had been gay lovers for 20 years and were leaving their wives to marry. And those two men were MARTIN SHEEN and SAM WATERSON.

Ah, you can’t really blame me for going “hmmmmm?” and pushing the play option. Well, maybe you can. Forget that; it’s over with; it’s been done. I stared at Sheen and Waterson for the first couple of episodes in a sort of stunned state. Then I started thinking that maybe the jokes were a little raw for me.

However, it was forbiddenly entertaining and I looked up reviews. Like me, the first season got a so-so rating with the remark that much of the script relied too much on off color references. HOWEVER . . . The next two seasons were judged to be much classier and “hilariously funny”. (And, actually, in the first season, I did really laugh at the yearly ritual of watching the National Spelling Contest, including the heckling from Lily Tomlin and Sam Waterson. Oh, and some of the words I had to look up for meaning, let alone spelling – that was a poke in the ribs.)

Well, I’ve confessed. I suppose there will be fallout. I have had practice with handling that. My father was very much a gentleman, but not a self-proclaimed censor and so when I visited there were some shows I was not welcome to watch in the main room. It went along with the recurring comment that began when I was in my early teens, “I don’t believe a lady should use words like that, Jody.”

I know I will probably have to sign into Netflix on the account not associated with Der Bingle to watch. That would be a problem at the apartment (The Ohio Redoubt) so I will have to binge here or rent DVDs.

I suppose it would have been smart not to have written about this at all.