The One Show I'm Embarrassed Of.

My siblings think that I’m embarrassed by watching cartoon shows. I’m not. Animation is one of the highest art forms, and the perception in the US of cartoons being a domain for children means that the shows are generally cheerful, fun, and inoffensive, a welcome escape from daily life. I proudly watch Wander Over Yonder, Milo Murphy's Law, Samurai Jack, and Over the Garden Wall.

My parents think that I’m embarrassed by watching older shows. I’m not. I treasure the open artificiality of old sitcoms, the development of the detective genre, the timelessness of so many human problems. I proudly watch I Love Lucy, Columbo, Golden Girls, and Perry Mason.

My friends think that I’m embarrassed by watching anime. I’m not. At least not very. The long-form storytelling and the anticipation of a slightly older audience base produces some real gems. I less proudly watch Fullmetal Alchemist, My Hero Academia, Psycho-Pass, and Death Parade.

No, there’s only one show I watch, again and again, that embarrasses me. I don’t even watch it at home, for fear that a parent or sibling may walk in and find me in front of it. I pull it up on my cellphone, sitting in my car on my lunch break or in between appointments. I put in headphones. I find a position that is comfortable while still hiding my phone screen from anybody who might walk by my windows. I check that I am alone. And then I watch a tall, skinny guy with long hair and dressed in women’s clothes wreak havoc in suburbia.

Gayle Waters-Waters. The she-king of her neighborhood. An active, middle-aged housewife. One episode has her breaking up driveways in order to give her croutons that unique crunch. Another has her kidnap world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma. More than once she goes toe-to-toe with the local wildlife. Weights in each hand, hair pulled up in a ponytail as she powerwalks, she stares directly into the camera, raging about Trader Joe's, the new housing development, and her husband, DA-AVE.

There are some shows that are a little bit like watching a car wreck. You can't look away. Then there are some shows that are a little bit like sitting in traffic when the driver in front of you, blasting Rick Astley from his speakers on loop, climbs out of his window onto the roof of his car, strips down to his briefs, and starts dancing the YMCA, screaming obscenities. That's the type of show Gayle is.

With an unerring instinct for the funny and widely applicable, the internet has absorbed the seconds of "Get rid of the couches! We can't let them know we sit!" and "Okay, was anybody going to tell me that a walrus can suck the skin off of a seal, or was I supposed to just read that in National Geographic myself?" into its memetic lexicon. Chris Fleming is a successful comedian, with 432,000 subscribers to his channel, the first Gayle episode has over 3.2 million views (at least eight of those from me), the show, while produced with minimal budget and improvisational acting, is clear and entertaining, and I could argue up and down about how its lampooning of suburban values is a masterpiece of social commentary on par with Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, and Kurt Vonnegut. But I won't.

There's a little part of each person, buried deeply inside some of us, not so deeply inside of others, that wants to watch belly flops and dodgeballs to the face and milk squirting out of people's noses. It's not a shameful part of us, but it is embarrassing, and it is a guilty pleasure to indulge it. It's a little bit of schadenfreude and a little bit of puerile perversity and a lot of a sense of the ridiculous. Watching Gayle speaks to that part of me, and, while I may be ashamed to admit it, I'm not ashamed enough to stop watching it.