Dateline: A Review

By Alexander Gordon

As Mother’s Day comes and goes, I thought I would dedicate this article to my Mother’s favorite show. Dateline. Millions end their day the same way: crawling under the covers, dimming the lights, and press play on a story about somebody who got knocked off the planet.

Dateline NBC has been on the air since 1992, making it the longest-running primetime show in NBC history. Keith Morrison joined the Friday news-magazine in 1995, and somewhere along the way, his voice became the unlikely lullaby of a generation. The man reports on stranglings and shallow graves; viewers describe his cadence as “soothing.” That is not a contradiction the audience is shy about. It is the whole appeal.

What is the show actually selling? Not crime, exactly. Resolution. Each episode opens with horror and closes with a verdict, a sentence, sometimes a confession. Real life rarely tidies itself this neatly. Dateline does the tidying for you, narrated by a man who sounds like he is tucking in the country.

It’s not odd or unusual. It’s a comfort show. Even though the true crime drama seems as if it wouldn’t be. From podcasts, books and shows alike, there is a trend to finding peace within solutions to some of the world’s horrors.

At the end of the day, my mom has solved the case before the first commercial break. One line, and suddenly the frame holds. Happy Mother’s Day Mom.

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