Television is the balm

I love my TiVo; I’m not ashamed to admit it. The creation of the digital video recorder has been a godsend to those of us who still confess that we love watching TV. 100 hours of memory, the ability to tape two shows at once, a searchable two-week guide, season passes … TiVo has leveled the playing field, and then some.

At the same time, our friend TiVo has us trapped. 100 hours! It seems like a lot, but we all know what its like trying to watch a backlog of even half that, as new shows are added to the total every night. It’s an uphill battle each and every day, because who knows when circumstance will force you and TiVo to be apart for an extended period of time. It’s like gambling: you can never seem to get ahead.

And, fully realizing that this is a nice problem to have, I often find myself frustrated at the fact that watching TV these days seems like work. My wife and I have to constantly press ahead just to clear some space on the box. Often we spend four straight hours watching our favorite shows without experiencing any pleasure. It can be rather disappointing.

So, why do we persist? For the day when we can once again come up for air and just enjoy some good writing and acting. We’ve experienced it before, brief stretches of time when the only thing recorded are movies that can wait. Then life hits and we not only have 70 hours of recorded crap, we’ve also got two VHS tapes full of the losers in the head to head to head game (i.e. Eleventh Hour when it airs against ER and Private Practice.) TV hasn’t been relaxing in quite some time.

Anyway, to the point. Recently, my wife and I lived through one of the most terrifying experiences for parents; a very ill baby. Over the course of five days, we saw our pediatrician three times, sat in a children’s ER three times, and were admitted to the hospital twice, for what turned out to be a particularly nasty strain of the flu. To say that we came home last week fried is vastly understating things.

We needed to sleep. We should have gone straight to bed. But I felt like I had to unwind. I needed to spend a little time in an alternate reality. So we plopped down on the couch and checked out what awaited us on our TiVo “To Do” list. It was no joke, and it was daunting. Honestly, I can’t even remember what we chose to watch first. Because, for the first time in a long time, we just enjoyed a show. And then another. And another.

And when we got into bed, I turned on our bedroom DVD player and watched some of season two of Seinfeld. TV on DVD before bed has long been a tradition of mine, but of late, its fallen prey to what is commonly known as exhaustion due to baby.

For the first time in a long time, I let one of my favorite shows put me to sleep. And for the rest of the week, my wife and I allowed our mood to control our show selection; heavy on the laughs and light on the thinking. We still knocked things out, but for once we did it with a smile on our faces and peacefulness in our minds.

Of course, now that we’ve enjoyed our vacation, it’s back to business. But spending a quiet few days with our television, and our family, gave me and my wife the strength to face another day, another week, and another month. For that, I say thank you to my TV.

It was an experience I wish we had never had, but one that we recovered from with a little help from an old friend.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Feb 20, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT