TV; “Brainwashed” Creative Commons License v2.0, author: Aaron Escobar

A new season of Heroes premiered on NBC last night.   I’ve never seen Heroes, despite my father telling me it’s one of his favorite shows on television (and my Dad doesn’t watch very many shows) and that I would like it.

Chances are I would like Heroes. It seems like something that would be right up my alley and that I should rent on DVD and catch up on.   So why don’t I? Well, unfortunately, the whole TV on DVD thing has made me realize I have a slight problem and like most college freshmen with beer, I can’t stop myself from binging.

I watch episode after episode starting in the early afternoon and before I know what’s happened it’s two in the morning, I have to force myself to turn the television off and I have crazy weird dreams where I can’t escape the television show.    And being that I no longer have a work that I have to go into and instead am left to my own sheer will-power to complete my work (this lovely blog that you are reading), I’m not sure I should even risk trying to watch a new television show.

This is why, beyond Heroes,  I have yet to see 30 Rock,  The Sopranos (outside of random episodes at pals houses) or a show I would probably love, Battlestar Gallactica. I know that if I started I couldn’t stop.   The Wire ruined my life (in the best way possible).   Whenever I got my hands on a new season I would watch 6-7 episodes in a row and totally disengage from life.   I don’t know if you’ve ever seen The Wire, but those dreams were really intense.

So what does this all mean, that I need to take off of work if I intend to try to and watch anymore television shows?  Well perhaps yes, but I think what’s at play here is that television shows were primarily meant to be watched as a television show at scheduled times.   TV shows are made to be addictive, if they weren’t nobody would tune in week after week.   So giving folks the option to be able to watch as many episodes as they want in one sitting is actually quite dangerous.

It’s like after Halloween - as a kid my mom would take our candy bags from us and we would get to choose pieces after we ate all of our dinner etc…   As we got older we were able to just keep our candy bags and more often than not I would eat to much candy in one sitting and feel sick. I couldn’t stop myself - the candy was right in front of me.

Some things, like candy and television, are meant to be consumed in moderation.

In the meantime I’m compiling a list of TV shows I want to see but won’t see until I figure out some system in which I can only watch 2-3 episodes per week. Force might be needed.   Ideas?

Also, because TV does good things, takepart to learn about how the 3 major networks teamed up to beat cancer.

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