Back when I was single and living alone, my TV became the perfect substitute for a roommate. I didn’t install cable so I would play bootleg DVDs every now and then. I'd put on different seasons of Sex and the City just so that I could fill in the otherwise empty apartment with girl talk and sexy lounge music. Otherwise, I'd park myself on the couch for days on end binging on The Office, Dexter, Family Guy or Mad Men. Whenever N came for a visit, we would instead get lost in the world of Pan Am. To think about it, I had long stopped catching TV shows weekly after box sets were made available.
The last two months before I moved out from my apartment to live in the suburbs, I actually curled up for days with the two seasons of Girls as my companions. The younger, grittier, less-fabulous, more techno-infused version of Sex and the City that speaks for my generation, alright. By the end of the day, I began to feel like I was part of the narrative— those characters and their accents played in my mind like they were real people I knew – and the withdrawal from the show was surprisingly a lonesome experience. Have you felt anything like that when you watch the seasonal bulk of TV shows?
Now that I am no longer living alone, I admit to missing those days when I could just lounge with my cat Charlie and a beloved TV show. But who needs an empty apartment to relive those marathon days? I’d say you binge-view whenever the right time comes, alone or not. So last Friday, as N busied himself doing clientele work in the study, I turned to the TV to watch the third season of Girls. The show took a bittersweet turn this time around when it comes to the foursome’s friendship. I loved every inch of the developing storyline. Some of the episodes were painful to digest, sometimes too cute to be true and other times just realistically awkward. Definitely worth ten hours of my life staying deep-seated on the couch.
Terrible, I know, but oh-so-worth it.
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Screenshots via HBO
