Hello, My name is Anna and I’m a TV-aholic.

When someone I’m just meeting asks me to tell them something interesting or unusual about myself my usual response is “I watch an extraordinary amount of television”. Some people may be a bit embarrassed by the amount of television I watch, others don’t believe me at all.

On average I watch roughly 3-4 episodes of various television a day. That could be in newly airing episodes, or re-watches, or made for TV movies. On the weekends, that number greatly increases. I’ve been known to watch a season or so of a TV show (usually about 22-25 episodes) in 24 hours. If every TV show that I watched was airing one new episode for one week, I would watch about 25 different shows in one solid week. That’s a lot of story lines to keep track of and a lot of time invested into some shows.

For some shows I continue to watch purely because I’ve already put so much time into them. I can’t seem to get rid of watching the show. In some cases, I don’t even have any emotional attachment to any of the characters or the story line anymore. Instead, I’ll binge watch it on days that I’m sick or feeling particularly annoying.

On the other side of the spectrum, I have shows where I am so emotionally attached to the characters and story lines that when they go on hiatus, I start a countdown to the new episodes. Ones where with every episode the writing gets better, the acting gets better and the over all storytelling gets better.

When I talk about television with someone who doesn’t know me, most of them get this concerned or apologetic look in their eye. I have to actually remind them that this is my choice. I don’t ignore my family to watch my shows nor do I neglect any housework that needs to be done or let it interfere with my day job.

TV and My Relationship

Sometimes, when I get home I like to pull up an episode of How I Met Your Mother and try and spot the similarities between the Lily/Marshall marriage and my own (Not compare them, that would be crazy, just enjoy the fact that there can be similarities). Other times, I introduce my husband to shows that I think he’ll love and visa versa. Sometimes it doesn’t stick, others he and I can have in depth conversations about. Going into detail about how a story played out and what we didn’t understand from the episode. We can have arguments and talk about why we love certain characters or hate others. Where I tend to gravitate to shows that have a focus on people and their relationships, he prefers to watch shows that suck you into the story.

Television can sometimes be portrayed by a mindless activity that you do when you want to waste a day. I disagree. Sure, there are some shows that create standalone episodes every week with just a dusting of a full season arc. In these instances you could watch episodes here and there and be able to keep up. There are other shows that if you blink or look away for a second, you’ll miss something incredibly important. Ones that keep you on your toes and keep your mind actively trying to see if you can figure out who the killer/cylon/troubled person/villian/hero/heroine/love interest is before the main characters do.

With some time, I hope that the stigma put on those that like to watch TV fades. Television isn’t the worst thing your child, friend, spouse or neighbor could be watching. There are things to be learned from television, there are interesting characters to be explored and new lands to discover. Just grab a remote, and start.

all gifs from various tumblrs