Spelling was a master of overdramatic cheese. His TV movies had titles like Little Ladies of the Night and One of My Wives is Missing. You could bet your last dollar that if there was a movie of the week coming on with a title like Satan's School for Girls I was canceling my evening plans to sit in front of the TV and enjoy some Aaron Spelling schlock.
S.W.A.T. Let's talk about S.W.A.T. I saw this show and thought, this is what I want to do. I want to dress in black and carry an arsenal of weapons around. We all did. So that's why we started playing S.W.A.T. at night instead of sitting in front of 7-11 making fun of hippies. 
We would all just scatter through backyards, chasing after each other, pretend weapons in hand. The fun wasn't really in catching anyone. It was in that one moment when you put your back up against the side of a house and held out your arm as if you were really packing and peeked stealthily around the corner, looking for a "bad guy." Yeah! Jackpot! Some kid from down the block was standing right there and you shoved the fake gun in his face and said...what? We were like 13 and 14. We weren't about to make fake gun sounds. So we did the next best thing. We just clocked each other upside the head with our hand as if it were the butt of a gun. Hell, we had no idea what S.W.A.T. people really did. We just knew that it looked really cool on tv. And we liked hitting each other in the head. Hey, it was more fun than ridiculing hippies. Because the hippies never even tried to come back at us. But the kids we played S.W.A.T. with? They would clock you right back in the head. Man, that was fun. Thank you, Aaron Spelling. Without you, I probably wouldn't have that permanent bump right at the base of my head.
Thank you, Mr. Spelling for all the campy, sexy, cheesy, sappy TV shows and movies you gave us. Without you, my teenage-years would be devoid of concussions and bizarre fantasies about what Starsky and Hutch did when the cameras weren't rolling and I wouldn't have ever wondered about simulated sex between a guy in a plastic bubble and his next door neighbor. For all you contributed to American culture, for all your hard work at ramping up the cheese factor on my tv screen, for your giving Shannon Doherty a place to show off her bitchiness and Heather Locklear a place to show off her legs, for all the lingo I picked up watching the Mod Squad and the Love Boat scenarios that played out inside my head during various acid trips, I salute you and thank you. RIP, Aaron Spelling. -M
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