I want to own a stinging red car. I have always wanted to own a stinging red car. A story I wrote and which the most wonderful Ellen Datlow bought for SCIFICTION when SCIFI was SCIFI and not SyFy (about whose meaning I, frankly, don’t have a clue unless this is supposed to contribute to the current wave of dumbing things down to very lowest common denominator) was entitled “The Woman in the Cherry Red Convertible by the Platinum Sea.” A mouthful, but a cool story (if I do say so myself) and fun because I got to indulge in a bit of car-color fetishism.
Perhaps my obsession with owning a red car explains some aspects of my car envy. When Maggie Stiefvater showed off proud photos of her Loki painted a brilliantly wonderful red, I went into conniptions.
Because you must understand: I live in Wisconsin. We are decidedly subdued. We don’t call attention to ourselves. I’m not Lutheran, but this is Lutheran country and everything Garrison Keillor says is the G-d’s truth, even quivering Jell-O molds with fruit cocktail which, I must admit, my mother made when I was a kid (although she was originally Greek Orthodox, so go figure).
Anyway, I decided that the next car I bought would be red. Period. End of story.
So, today, I brought home my baby: a lovely Nissan Xterra 6-speed, manual, because we all know that sticks are wonderful to drive, blah, blah.
Now, is this the sexiest car? Of course not. Does it drive like a truck-truck? Yes. Is it, in fact, a truck cleverly disguised as an SUV? Pretty darned close. Will it push the snow plow so we can get out of the driveway and was this only one of two vehicles that could handle the plow AND came as sticks? Yes. (The other was a FJ Cruiser–decidedly retro but drove like a Brinks armored car. All I needed was a Pinkerton detective riding shotgun. And talk about claustrophobia . . . teeny, tiny windows that doubled as gun-ports.)
But, believe it or not, this is not a post about my Nissan. You know, cars are cool, but they’re just cars. (I know: sacrilege.) No, no, this is about what you can learn from watching television.
I just so happened to have stumbled on a fabulous show, “Men of a Certain Age.” The New York Times turned me on to it after doing not one but two great reviews, and I have to admit that I rented the first season from Netflix because I was curious to see what Scott Bakula was up to after Enterprise.
(Is Bakula my favorite actor? No. Did I like Quantum Leap? Yes, but I wasn’t devoted. Did I watch Enterprise? Not often, and I’m a Trekker. The show just never floated my boat. Still, I was curious and he was fabulous in The Informant! which was an overall great film with Matt Damon playing the anti-Bourne.)
Well, first of all, the show’s great. If you’ve never seen it, you can catch Season One on DVD; the second season just wrapped up on TNT although the show will return for the summer. No, I haven’t watched any of those episodes; I was too busy watching Season One and getting thoroughly hooked.
What’s it about? Pretty simple, actually: the show revolves around three best friends, all guys around 50, all of whom are in some stage of midlife crisis. Ray Romano is Joe, who owns a party supply store, is separated from his wife and two kids, and has a gambling addiction.
Andre Braugher is Owen, a happily married guy with three kids who’s unhappily employed as a car salesman for his father’s Chevy dealership.
And Scott Bakula, he of Captain Archer fame, is Terry, a failed actor with a Peter Pan complex and, except for his two friends, a pretty empty life.
Anything I can say about the show has already been said better and more coherently by the reviewers for the New York Times–so all I can add is a resounding YES: this is not a show for guys. It’s for us girls who believe that guys really have these soulful conversations about life, the universe and everything. The reality is … probably not. But it’s still great to watch.
And educational, too. I’m referring specifically to the ins and outs of car dealerships. Now, do I take everything I see on television as the G-d’s truth? Of course not. But was it, well, fascinating to see a scenario I watched on TV played out as my husband and I were going through the paperwork for the car? Oh, yeah. If I hadn’t just watched it happen in fiction, I’d never have believed it.
What I’m talking about are the tactics to make you shell out more money–specifically, the parade of people who not only congratulate you on making such a fine purchase but then play off one another to try and get you to pay more. Now, we didn’t haggle; it’s not my style and I knew what I wanted and so it was . . . fine, let’s just do this, I have books to write. But there was an episode in MoaCA, “How to Be an All-Star,” that could’ve been our experience in Spark Notes: the salesmen going through all sorts of machinations–enlisting fellow salesmen to act as bogus experts or play off one another to corral a buyer into paying more or closing a deal–that I pretty much lived through. Nothing quite so silly as different salesmen pretending to be IT experts, but close. For example, there wasn’t much to wrangle about with our car; we special-ordered it because no one in America seems to want a stick anymore and we knew what we wanted. There just wasn’t that much left to try and sell us on; we’d already done the research.
But there were a few little extras: coverages for this and that and, the priciest: a hefty protection package that would, essentially, Scotch-guard the entire bloody car, inside and out. We were quoted one price. Then, in the business manager’s office, we were quoted a different, lower price, one that was “at cost.” When we still didn’t bite (it was only a hundred bucks lower, for heaven’s sake) and when the deal was nearly done, the big overall manager–actually, a very nice guy–appeared to tell us that he’d give us a $500 rebate if we buy the service RIGHT NOW and at this ONE TIME PRICE.
So, magically, in the space of fifteen minutes, we’re down to half the original quote.
You have to visualize it: us, the business manager, the big dealership manager, the guy in the office next door who’s looking through the window . . . all of them teaming up to try and make us buy this package.
I kept looking around for Andre Braugher. It was like I’d wandered onto the set of the show because this was EXACTLY what those guys did.
No, we didn’t buy the package. The dealership manager then cornered us at the door, asking what it would take to get us to bring the car for service. We live an hour away, so it’s just not feasible and there’s a smaller dealership nearby–who, yes, treated us badly in terms of the sales and explains why we didn’t buy from them but who can, yes, service the car.
The thing is, I felt bad saying no to the guy. I felt bad declining his offer to knock down the price of the protection package. If I’d been alone, I might have caved; the husband is a wonderful reality check in these kinds of situations.
But what this means is that the television show has it spot on.
Now, should you run and watch this show so you know how to behave in a car dealership and what machinations the sales force goes through to get you to cough up more cash? No. But does television sometimes get it right AND manage to create a fabulously fun (though not funny) and addictive show to boot?
Oh, you betcha.
I’m going out to take mah truck for a spin.
