On watching television

If you’ve known me for any length of time, you know I don’t own a television. This is not because I make any judgment about TV entertainment but rather that I like to get things done. And I know that if I have a television, I will watch it and not get things done.

Some people are capable of moderation. They say, “I’ll watch one hour of television per night.” Or “I will watch my favorite show on Wednesdays,” and that’s what they do, and go them. I have found that it’s much better for me to get rid of the television entirely versus relying on my self-control. My self-control gets used up doing things like working and not punching that jackass across the street.

But I digress. I don’t own a television, but Jessica (my daughter) and I do watch movies together at home now and then. Recently I got really really tired of harboring all the DVDs we watched them on, so I got a trial subscription to Netflix, which means we can stream movies to a laptop. When I was a kid the amazingness of this would have floored me, but Jessica is a child of the internet, and it is a ho-hum experience at best for her.

I’m digressing again. As I was looking up movies to watch one afternoon a few months ago, I saw that all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were available to stream. Diane, a friend of mine who loves good stories, had told me that this was one of her favorite shows and as a writer she had found a lot to love and she thought I would, too. One evening when I was taking a break (Jess was with her dad), I turned on the first show of the first season.

Damn you, Diane.

Yes. As I’m sure you guessed from all that foreshadowing, I got totally hooked and ended up obsessively watching the entire series, start to finish, twice, and then I started in on the spin-off series Angel, which behavior is why I don’t own a television in the first place.

More about Buffy in upcoming posts. In the meantime, do you have a TV obsession? Tell me in the comments (or maybe don’t. I might not get anything done ever again.)

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