Post by pakman on Mar 30, 2022 10:56:03 GMT -5
Today is a very special day for me personally when it comes to my love of America's Most Wanted. Exactly 20 years ago on this date, March 30, 2002, I became a regular viewer* of America's Most Wanted when I caught the Strange But True special edition on that fateful Saturday night. I didn't intend to become a regular viewer, but the following week when I saw a preview for the Bad Girls edition, I couldn't not miss that! Then the following week's preview talked about a guy people were worried would become the next Timothy McVeigh (Stephen Anderson). And then the week after that previewed a church-going couple by day, killers by night (capture of Brenda Andrew & James Pavatt). By then, AMW had reached their 700th capture (Michael Bliss) and I wasn't going to stop watching anytime soon!
I've remained an AMW fan since, eventually tuning in to Final Justice reruns on the Reality TV channel, reading John Walsh's three books, literally rearranging my Saturday nights so that I'd never miss AMW (one night Hillary Clinton came to my college campus on a campaign stop and it ended mere moments before AMW began - I literally ran from the gym to my dorm room with seconds to spare before I hit record on my VCR and started, just cutting off the 30 second intro).
While later on in AMW's FOX run I wasn't as strict with catching episodes (there's more than one episode in my collection that has commercials recorded, something I normally didn't do, because I had plans I'd rather not miss) and one episode I skipped altogether on purpose, something I'd never done (it was the rerun of the Dale Helmig episode, where AMW was trying to get him out of prison), I still loved the show. Even with moments that make me scratch my head, I've always loved AMW. I even watched every Lifetime episode and tuned in for the short-lived reboot in 2021.
Some of my friends ask me why I started watching AMW at such a young age (I had just turned 13 and a half when I started). I was thinking about this recently, and I think the reason is because I felt like, to paraphrase John Walsh, I could make a difference. At the time, I was not going through a good time; my grades were bad, I was being bullied, at times I felt like I had no friends, parents were upset because my principal had come out as transgender, and this was also going on in the aftermath of 9/11. There were times I felt so lonely and hopeless, but I think AMW gave me hope. It made me feel like that, maybe, I could do something. I started keeping an eye out for these fugitives, and I took several cases to heart (notably, I was the same age as Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis when they were abducted, and to me, it felt like something happened to two of my friends; I was heartbroken when their bodies were found). I even created my own Dirty Dozen list! Heck, I joined this forum just so I could talk about AMW with people who understood me.
Also, I don't mean to sound like a hipster, but I think all of us can say we were into true crime before it became the cool thing to talk about.
Over the next year, I'll be celebrating AMW on my blog - I may share the link a bit later - with commemorative posts, reflections, lists of fugitives, and maybe even a few videos (if YouTube cooperates, at least). But for today, I celebrate being an AMW fan for 20 years!
* - while I became a regular viewer of AMW on this date 20 years ago, the Strange But True edition was not the first episode of AMW I ever watched. I'd previously seen two episodes at random; the Dec. 29, 2001 show and the March 16, 2002 episode.
