I was recently asked why I watch so much TV. I proceeded to give a 10+ minute answer as though I'd been rehearsing it for weeks. I've discussed it before, but maybe not in a comprehensive way. I'm also kind of bored of watching TV at the moment, see myself staying up much later than is necessary, and figure why not break into the night with something light.
Like any habit, it doesn't start in a vacuum. The road is paved with dozens of things I've attempted to do instead. I'm as easily pulled away from a show as there is a suggestion to do so. But when all else fails, one thing remains certain. There is always something to watch.
Before it was TV, it was reading. If you're not focused on fiction, that will bring you down in a hurry. During drug study life, I had all day every day to read about the world. I made sure to sleep through the day and start reading sometime in the afternoon, but the idea is the same. Now, your busy and adult friends who might share an article or two every couple of weeks are up against your 5 a day that you've distilled down from the 25 or 30 you read that day. This means you have nothing in common to talk about, and when you do opine, it's at a level of derision and detail that little miss “helpful sharer” didn't want to engage you at. Low mood and active alienation isn't sustainable.
Before reading, it was the clinging to the last strings of hope for “together” things like consistently dancing on Tuesdays or trying new things at cheap enough spots around town. I had weeks and weeks of events rollerskating, ice skating, water sliding, movie going and hosting, sports and lunches, which week after week were either ignored or started to look like some increasingly desperate move to cling to youth more than anyone's genuine engagement to spend time together. The burden of getting older and adopting new responsibilities I'll say killed that, but I think there was a considerable amount of no longer wanting to fake what I wasn't actually faking taking hold too.
Before that people were actually around to just hang about and do nothing or anything with. Before that was coffee shop and business fervor. Before that school. Then back to partying, before school again. Then work and school all the time. The point is, there's been stages and differing degrees of focus at each one. Would I rather everyday be able to build or create at my leisure? Duh. Would it be nice to engage with people who want more for themselves than what they can scrape together or lie about over drinks? I'd kill every former conversational partner for a shot at a single one.
But why has TV persisted? It's my personal Elizabeth Warren. What can you do at basically every level of mental involvement? Sit around, or walk the treadmill, or do some yoga, while the moving pictures talk at you. I'll of course focus in on something quality, but the rest is to help keep my mind from attacking me. I need to be engaged in something, might as well be a show.
You might be wondering, why do I have to be engaged? Why can't you sit back and relax or enjoy yourself? Mind you, this is usually where we spring into judgments on my character, but nonetheless, I wonder, what makes you think I could get more relaxed? I've been a “sit and stare” kind of person the majority of my life. I was glued to my video games as a kid; at least my memory of being so wants to leave me befuddled that I developed any athletic ability. I grew up poor enough where loading up on free library movies and binge watching TV were the thing to do well before the term “binge watch” came into the popular lexicon.
Admittedly, I also like TV worlds considerably more than the real one. It'd be dope as hell to have a huge extended Modern Family where our hijinks would never overtake how we care about each other and eventual resolution. The deep mystery and high stakes of The Americans is as close as I'll ever get to play spy. Violence and the wonders of mysticism in Vikings makes you want to believe in destiny. Stories, be they in TV, movie, or comic book form, are actually going somewhere. They're going to be there each week. They're going to end. You can rely on them in a way the regular world will never provide. The Challenge and Impractical Jokers are going to make me laugh, every single time. Brockmire was suggested to me out of the blue, and my gut hurt all day from laughing.
TV also functions as sort of my last remaining bridge into anyone bothering to connect with me. I post a poem about another lonely and sleepless night, easy to forget. I post that Legion is perfection, now we're cooking with gas. I had an old show FlashForward on while I was delivering food, and wouldn't you know it, the guy handing me the bags remembered that show and liked it back then! It's easy to debate the superiority of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D over anything DC. It's considerably harder to debate the intricacies of the Marvel Civil War and what lessons those characters might impart to how we conduct our lives.
Given that I watch so much of it across different times and genres, TV is still a huge source of inspiration. You know what I never found googling different “green” ways to live? A water system they set up in the ground of a desert home on Homestead Rescue, also suggested to me be someone else who opened up via commenting on what I was watching at the time. TV gives me lines to explore whether I can be a friend or family member like what's being depicted. It keeps me constantly turning over in my head what it means to be an actor and whether any pursuit of fame or being seen isn't fundamentally corrupt. I get to lose myself in a way that makes me think of both Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman who both have decried not wanting or not being good at being themselves.
As a window into the soul, if you're not out amongst the people, you can infer what they're like. Reality and soap opera TV overwhelming? I bet there's a mathematical formula that could consider the TV variables that would have spit out Trump as president. Does it get easier to see through people's motivations when the hype machine cup runs over and the praise outweighs what you can pick out on screen? Constantly. You don't need “The 25 Best Shows this March” to watch. That you can get that, and 25 more lists as long or longer seems to speak to not just me having an overwhelming amount of time to watch or desire to connect.
I've managed to find some truly break-out interesting things or worthwhile people as well. Sometimes the musical guest sends shivers. I can hear about everything, but seeing how someone talks about what they worked on can spark my interest to add it to the queue. It's a feedback loop. Is 90% of everything James Corden does or says on the show throwaway things to sleep to? Sure. He's also an incredibly charismatic geeky fanboy who's enthusiasm has bled onto me numerous times. I don't need to see the same jokes recycled across The Daily Show, Colbert, The Opposition, Real Time with Bill Maher, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Our Cartoon President, and The President Show. I like discovering lesser known but influential people Trevor Noah and Jordan Klepper interview who reside at the level of whose works I want to map. Colbert acts as a barometer of “Joe Everyman” morality and sentiment. Long-form discourse at every opportunity is invaluable. Samantha Bee reminds us of what The Daily Show isn't anymore and does a lot of actual fund raising and awareness causing real change. And watching others' catharsis is an invitation to keep tabs on how people are working through what I perceive as suicidal circumstances.
TV is a search for a voice when no one cares to read what you're actually saying. It's attempting to pick up the pulse of what “the world” seems to be craving, be it the apocalypse in so many versions, or redemption, or family, or cheese, or just to abuse the safe and familiar. What to make of people patting each other on the back for “discovering” that as long as it's the black people who are rich and there's a fight for the crown it can be called revolutionary! At some important level, what we're creating is a testament to what we genuinely feel and think right now. Is our media landscape a reflection of something that amounts to more than a cultural psychosis or blindness? How broad are we looking? How willing are we to explore not just “that” something got popular, but why? What am I saying in watching so much TV? Well, pick a blog. Or pick up the bones of what I used to say and work towards before I leaned on my supplement.
I used to love saving shows to watch with my ex. Such a stupidly simple and common thing that says, “I want to spent all of this time with you.” I found considerably more laughs watching Archer as a group when we visited Colorado than I tend to on my own. I've watched shows I can't stand, and in describing why, turned friends onto them who've said it's now one of their favorites. In broadening my horizon of what I was willing to watch, I got to understand why my dad advocated for Friday Night Lights and plan to check out Lillyhammer because he used the same tone. I've gotten songs stuck in my head and discovered casting and production trends that I consistently admire and never would have found otherwise. You drop the right show name anywhere on the TV web and you get likes and nods out of the woodwork. It's a huge connective tissue of influence and ideas we take as for granted as water.
There's also a healthy dose of my obsessive tendency to “watch everything” at play. I tried to quit watching Arrow and The Flash cold turkey, and succumbed to the sunk-cost fallacy. Why watch 6 seasons and 17 episodes of something if you're not just going to get to the end, especially if you've been speeding up the playback and barely paying attention already? If I'm going to lock in, or at least feel the pull to, the things I do, the visual media environment is where I've carved out a large enough chunk of meaning that I do not find in the rest of my life. And while I have to be dragged through a job, or the struggles of home building, or the failures of interpersonal interaction, I can hop on and ride as many fanciful, dramatic, or life-affirming tales as are running.
My “balance” isn't between “relaxing” doing something like mountain climbing or camping and the everyday stress of real life. I'm always flirting with sanity verses insanity. I'm strung out on meaning verses emptiness. I need engagement against rotting. I'm proof positive that there are way more hours in the day than you might be willing to bother with. When you're stuck in this moment, and you can't seem to pursue anything “more” meaningful, whether it's words coming out here, or words coming in from media, something needs to happen. I'm still not prepared to stare at the ocean or a stream unless I'm tripping acid, and mountains are still giant piles of dirt. I envy whatever you're getting from wandering around and looking at those things instead.
