Stay Tuned was a bizarre cult masterpiece that came 25 years too early

Do you remember couch potatoes? No, not this nightmarish depiction of what an anthropomorphic version of herpes might look like. I'm talking about the term couch potato. It came about in the 70's, and was popularized in the 80's. It referred to someone who led a "sedentary life style." Basically, you sat on the couch all day, watched television and were essentially turned into an unintelligible mound of cells while doing so. It was an inevitable observation with the advent of television as a true cultural force in the 1980's. While playful, it was definitely meant as an insult. 

 

As television has become more and more of a normality (banality, even) of everyday life, the use for such pejoratives has mostly waned. Now, if one spends all weekend doing nothing but, say, watching an entire season of House of Cards on Netflix while eating a sleeve or two of Chips Ahoy! in the process (don't you judge me), its admission is more of a pop culture badge of honor. "Binge" watching, which Netflix helped bring to cultural prominence in the just the past handful of years, is not seen as a bad thing; it is simply a thing. This is a much different world than the one that existed when Peter Hyams directed Stay Tuned in 1992.

 

Stay Tuned is an American satire/fantasy starring John Ritter (R.I.P.) as a neglectful husband and father, who spends all of his free time camped out on the couch in front of the "tube" eating snacks and watching mindless television programs. Framed as a sort of parable aimed to show the virtues of being a significant presence in your own life and not taking things for granted by becoming too complacent, Stay Tuned finds Ritter's character getting literally sucked into his TV's world, forced to live out demonically conceived TV channels and demented programs as different stages of hell. If this all sounds super dark and possibly a little disturbing for a John Ritter comedy, that's because...well, it is. The film, however, just isn't presented that way. 

 

Clearly marketed for its pop culture references and parodies, as opposed to its existential lectures and moralities, Stay Tuned is actually kind of a conceptual mess. However, this is meant as a complement. Most of this is intentional, and the rest of it simply works to fill out the film's fantastical premise. Trying to save your and your wife's eternal souls from what is essentially Hades, one increasingly sadistic television program at a time is the kind of thing you can really only explain once and get away with it. Stay Tuned has fun with the rules of its premise, but surprisingly never goes full tilt.

 

In one pleasant throw-away gag, for instance, Ritter unsurprisingly shows up briefly as his beloved alter-ego Jack Tripper of Three's Company fame. Just then, though, everything switches and he immediately has to rescue his wife from literally getting ran over by a train whilst tied to the tracks on the next "channel." Also, they both are cartoon mice at one point. Really, this stuff is bat-shit insane when you think about it. But what's fascinating is that the movie is never really presented as anything but some good, ol' fashioned zaniness. In truth, though, this kind of tone adds to the movies purposeful Attention Deficit Disorder. 

 

The fact that Ritter's character ultimately ends up saving himself from becoming a lost soul who only indulges in escapist fantasies, by having an over the top adventure that indulges in escapist fantasies with larger than life characters with outlandish stakes is the kind of layered irony that mainstream American comedies very rarely trafficked in back in 1992-- or, most years for that matter. Stay Tuned is a truly strange confluence of different ideas and concepts all fighting for center stage, yet the movie completely refuses to embrace its freakish qualities. Which is fucking fascinating. 

 

The movie wraps up with the hero saving the day, and his wife, and his family and himself. He betters himself and embraces his passions in more productive ways now. Stay Tuned acts like what you just saw was normal and ordinary, and, ya know, not an inter-dimensional battle between the actual heaven and hell in a struggle for the directionless souls of lay-abouts and slobs that is treated as a game of one-upmanship. Just a kooky comedy! I would say that Stay Tuned was at war with itself, if it seemed for a moment that it was interested in saying anything at all. It simply does so incidentally--which, actually feels more pure? This makes Stay Tuned not only a ridiculously enjoyable ridiculous comedy, but a truly bizarre 90's masterpiece that arrived far too early.