What an episode

Written by Moran Sheleg

I am perhaps the most stubborn of people when having to admit that I was wrong about something. Anything. I do not like it, and I do not take it well. Just ask my boyfriend. If I were the type to admit failure then at this point in the article I would probably be confessing shamefully, my head hanging, as my hands grudgingly spell out how I have thoroughly failed my task this week, and so do not deserve to call myself Miss Quit any longer. Fortunately, however, I am no such person. After all, it really did seem a wonderful idea at the time.

For some odd reason I felt truly excited at the prospect of resisting the lure of the couch and, after my first day of being a non-viewer, rather smug too. It was really very easy, at first.

In reality, I am a total nightmare to watch television with. I just can’t shut up, and I have no attention span whatsoever if I don’t know exactly what is happening, and end up annoying everyone around me who is trying to watch. Again, just ask my boyfriend.

I thrive when busy, and I’ve never been one to plonk myself in the living room from dawn to dusk with the people on the screen as my only social interaction. Sure there are programmes that I jump with glee at the thought of seeing a new episode of (The Mighty Boosh), those that I’ve seen far too many times but are always guaranteed to cheer me up if I’m feeling a bit low (Sex and the City, QI) and ones that I am less than proud of admitting to, mostly because I am peer-pressured into watching them (Neighbours). Yet, perhaps naively, I could not help but think it would be no great effort.

‘Just imagine’, began one of the many dialogues with myself that I have each day, ‘how many hours a week a person wastes sat in front of what is essentially a sequence of flashing images…why, I could take over the world in that time, and everyone would be too distracted watching a screen to notice! Mwah ah ah!’

Actually, I think that may just have been the plot of an episode of Doctor Who, when aliens control humanity through a mesmerising box so that they can take over planet Earth……but anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I had decided that giving up the box really did seem like the best idea in all the history of human thought.

And then it got to Wednesday.

For you see, Wednesday equals Heroes in my house, and this was no average Heroes Wednesday (or Heroesday, as we call it in that scary and wonderful place which, during term-time, I call home). This was the Wednesday: the night of the finale. Not just one, but two episodes. The big one, the most monumental television event since, well, ever. So big, in fact, that I had completely forgotten about it by the time I experienced the earth-shattering brainwave that would prevent me from basking in its beautiful fluorescent glow.

Doesn’t life have one hell of a sense of humour? Once I realised the implications of my decision, and what I had sentenced myself to, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Ironically enough, I can only describe how I felt in telly terms. It was like being the emotional equivalent of a sitcom: not quite funny enough to be tragic, and not quite tragic enough to be funny. In a word: pathetic.

Worst of all, I knew what would ultimately have to happen. I would have to admit defeat. For a grand total of about three minutes, I was utterly distraught; but then, like the short-lived agony of a cringe-inducing commercial, it was over.

Suffice it to say that my TV strike ceased to have any chance of survival once I returned to my senses. There was no way that I was going to miss Heroes, no matter how much self-hatred I would have to endure. For a short while, though, it really was a dramatic moment in my own head.

Sulky but unrepentant, not to mention tired from staying up to fulfil my failure, I eventually overcame the televisual hangover that usually results from a marathon watch. It was then that I realised it. You see, my true failure was not the giving in, but something far far worse: the incapability to realise the positive value of the boob tube. So ready to condemn television, I had overlooked the essential reason why we all hold it so dear to our hearts, and why we continue to watch. The one and only thing that will keep us watching until the day we die.

Did you notice how I mentioned not a singular but a communal love of Heroes? A love so strong that it has transformed what is just another slot in the TV schedule into an institutional household event? For it is not the programme itself that we love, but the feeling that we share whilst gathered around its comforting luminescence. Herein lies its power. Television is intrinsic to our way of life: it is a fundamental part of the student ethos.

Think about it. When we first entire the hyper-surreal world of university, thrown together with a range of others from all kinds of backgrounds who are equally as bewildered, television can prove to be a social life-vest. More than entertainment, the old ‘idiot box’ can truly bond people together, now matter how disparate their circumstances, and especially so in such a surreal environment as university.

It is common knowledge that, when you are a fresher, if you come to university with a television people will flock to you. If you don’t, no doubt you will seek out a new friend who has the power of the box. Second and third years - remember the one person on your floor who had a set? Of course you do, you probably live with them now. Across the nation, students gather around to banter, laugh and cement friendships through the medium of the small screen.

Essentially, a television is so much more than a functioning object. It is another housemate. What’s more, it has a profound influence on a person’s very character. Everyone has a television identity. Taste in programmes can reveal a lot about an individual; why, I even know of relationships that have ended simply due to the incompatibility of these tastes.

We can all be labelled as a certain type. Myself, for example: I am what I call a Voice-over (never shuts up, always has an opinion about every character / situation / twist, insists on sharing said opinions throughout). My friend Rachel is a Wrecker (she always gives things away if she’s seen the particular episode that you are trying to watch).

Then there is the Shusher (futilely attempts to follow what is on the box whilst surrounded by a group of women, unable to hide their annoyance when inevitably disturbed), such as my unfortunate boyfriend. Other common specimens include the Jingler, who knows every single advert and will incessantly sing/speak along with each slogan in perfect time; the Devout, who would rather miss their own wedding than their favourite programme; and the Procrastinator, who adamantly claims that they ‘just like it on in the background’. We all know at least one.

So what can I conclude from my failure? Well firstly, TV is the beating heart of any student house. It is an endless source of banter, an educational tool, and a horribly compulsive fact of life. Anybody who says that they never watch it is a liar, a pensioner, or an abhorrent bore (and an even worse housemate), and should be avoided at all costs.

The only thing more worrying than a person who doesn’t watch television, is one who doesn’t read books. Most importantly, that little screen ultimately reflects the screen within us all. Like they say, you are what you watch, especially when you are watching it with others.

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