Jenny Dunn Knows Good T.V.
Jenny Dunn
Issue date: 2/15/05 Section: Features
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I spent the past Friday night, as I spend most Friday nights, with a glass of Bella Serra Pinot Grigiot and my friends: Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte. This particular Friday, though, was different than the rest. My roommates and I were watching not just any eight episodes of "Sex and the City" - we were watching the final eight episodes, which I had never seen on account of both being abroad when they aired last spring and not having HBO On Demand.
As the closing credits of "An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux" rolled, I took a last sip of my tear-diluted Bella Serra and wondered if I would have anything to look forward to ever again. This is what TV does to me: it creates a new, joyful world, full of romance and wit, and then yanks it away, making the real world seem that much more bleak and depressing in comparison.
I, like so many other women who write fluffy, unimportant journalistic pieces, fancy myself a Carrie Bradshaw of sorts. I may not have Carrie's (who I have to continually remind myself is a fictional character) experience when it comes to questions of sex, or cities, for that matter, but when it comes to T.V., I sure as hell can write about love.
The emotional attachment that one can feel towards a TV show is amazing. In high school, I had a TV show for every day of the week. My boyfriend at the time was generally not allowed to call me between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., as watching Triple H pummel Mankind on WWF "Smackdown" was obviously more important. I still, to this day, watch "All My Children" at least three times a week, a habit that I inherited from my mother, who has taped it every day since it began in 1970.
The question is: at what point does TV become a problem, a means of living our lives by watching rather than doing? How can we dump the one thing in our lives that has always been there for us and stop living vicariously?
You don't have to watch TV a lot to have a problem. I myself have cut back to only three shows that I watch religiously, although I have to admit that the occurrence is rare when I am found eating a meal anywhere other than in front of TBS.
As the closing credits of "An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux" rolled, I took a last sip of my tear-diluted Bella Serra and wondered if I would have anything to look forward to ever again. This is what TV does to me: it creates a new, joyful world, full of romance and wit, and then yanks it away, making the real world seem that much more bleak and depressing in comparison.
I, like so many other women who write fluffy, unimportant journalistic pieces, fancy myself a Carrie Bradshaw of sorts. I may not have Carrie's (who I have to continually remind myself is a fictional character) experience when it comes to questions of sex, or cities, for that matter, but when it comes to T.V., I sure as hell can write about love.
The emotional attachment that one can feel towards a TV show is amazing. In high school, I had a TV show for every day of the week. My boyfriend at the time was generally not allowed to call me between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., as watching Triple H pummel Mankind on WWF "Smackdown" was obviously more important. I still, to this day, watch "All My Children" at least three times a week, a habit that I inherited from my mother, who has taped it every day since it began in 1970.
The question is: at what point does TV become a problem, a means of living our lives by watching rather than doing? How can we dump the one thing in our lives that has always been there for us and stop living vicariously?
You don't have to watch TV a lot to have a problem. I myself have cut back to only three shows that I watch religiously, although I have to admit that the occurrence is rare when I am found eating a meal anywhere other than in front of TBS.
