"When you're single, and your friends start to get married, every wedding invitation brings a strange moment of self evaluation. Will you be bringing a guest or attending alone? What it's really asking is 'where do you see yourself in 3 months? Sitting next to your girlfriend or hitting on a brides-made?" I always checked I was bringing a guest. I was an optimist."
Ok this post isn't about relationships, or weddings, etc so worry not. It's about TV. Yes TV. What? I think TV shows are a great medium for doing more than just entertainment. They can bring solace and connection to these characters that help you feel less alone or abnormal.
My point of this post is the weird connection I have realized between my real life, and my "comfort" TV shows.
We all know what comfort food is. But today I'm talking about "comfort TV". That show you throw on when things are so bad you just need something to...well...obviously...comfort you. I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Partially cause my normal, go to comfort show Gilmore Girls, has sparked a confusing taste in my mouth via the reboot. But we're not going to get into that.
More importantly, and a little selfishly, I'm going to turn to my left and look to my mantle. There I see a photo of me and my BFF, and a photo of me and my college roommate.
When I moved into the dorm with this stranger, I didn't didn't know what to expect. But we soon became fast friends, and both realized we had an affinity for the show "Scrubs". This was before the easy "DVR" or "Streaming" age, so we found ways to watch the entire series online together. FYI there is no better way to bond than with a great TV show. OK maybe there is, but you catch my drift. It became our thing. To this day, if I hear Boston's "More Than a Feeling" I think of her. Oh and of course "Poison" (cause Turk air banding is epic).
So to continue this concept...
A couple years later, my best friend stopped by to see me on his way to..well who knows where. He was always going somewhere. So I took him out for a day in NYC with no idea what or where we were going. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I failed at giving him any decent experience, but what he gave me was so much more. We were on the subway and he told me about this episode of this show he loved: "How I Met Your Mother". The story was about the word moist, but that's not relevant to this story. A few years latter, after sadly having to leave the City That Never Sleeps, I started watching said show. Wow. Just Wow. I was hooked. I finished the entire series (no spoilers but the ending is...rough). I re-watched the series a couple years later, and then again with my BFF. When I finish writing this, I will be back to re-watching. Let that sink in
I said something the other day that I say a lot. "Every story has been done, it's the characters that make you watch." But I'm realizing there's an element I'm leaving out of this comfort TV concept. It's great to find a show with characters you love and identify with. But when you find a show with not only that, but a real life, amazingly important person in your life that you shared the experience of living through those TV moments...well that is priceless. And that, my friends, is what TV comfort is truly about.
This is Robin Sher...I mean Heart Rose, signing off from metro news home. I hope this post had been legand... wait for it...
