The first six months after high school graduation were tough. I had no idea of where I was going and since no one wanted to hire me, I just spent my time at the library, taking long walks or just letting the days pass me by.
It was during this period that I discovered the TV shows. I hadn’t watched that much television before, what with my days being spent in school and at the stables and my evenings spent studying, reading or surfing on the internet. But now I suddenly had oceans of time and one Saturday I just happened upon the first season of Gilmore Girls. I was alone in my father’s huge apartment with a fever, and Lorelai’s and Rory’s quick and witty dialogue seemed like the perfect cure.
Soon I had finished all the seven seasons and went on to other stuff. By mid-fall, I was watching Grey’s Anatomy, House, Ally McBeal, Scrubs, Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, Heroes and Entourage. I could spend entire days in bed with my computer watching the shows, not even bothering getting up to get food.
Well, that went on for a couple of months. Then I got fed up with myself, got out of bed and applied to university. That spring I studied philosophy and since then I have been just as busy as before high school graduation. But still I get those lulls, those Sundays when I can’t seem to move an inch out of bed. That’s when I fall back into my old habit and watch episode after episode until the Sunday is gone and the week starts anew. A part of me feels that I’m wasting my time, that I should go outside instead, meet people, live a little. But another part of me is just too exhausted from all the studying and working and caring that I can’t be bothered. Some months, the other part wins every time.
And really, who can blame me, when there are so many great shows? How I Met Your Mother and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Downton Abbey and Community and The Good Wife and Lark Rise to Cranford and The Big Bang Theory and Greek. I just can’t seem to stop watching Grey’s Anatomy and during my weaker moments I even enjoy Supernatural. They create a brake in a chaotic life and oh, how I need that sometimes.
But my little TV show addiction hasn’t only led to me being asocial. It has also given me one of my very best friends. During that depressing period after graduation, I for some reason stayed in touch with one particular friend from high school. Natalia. Most of my other friends from high school I lost contact with, but her I kept texting and one day she invited me to drink tea at her house. We hadn’t been really close before, but that first cup of tea at her kitchen table led to more tea drinking sessions and when I think back on that fall, those moments at her kitchen table are a few of the only positive memories that I have. And one thing that we talked about, one of the things that made us discover our similarities in taste and humour, was when we both realised our shared passion for TV shows. Zach Braff was our hero and our guilty pleasure was the BBC miniseries made from Jane Austen novels and other costume dramas. I got her to start watching Bones, and then when she moved to Bolivia for two years and I went to visit her, we spent entire nights watching pirate copies of Scrubs and Bones in the guest house by the river, eating artichoke and huge, elbaborate fruit plates and drinking papaya and banana milkshakes and Amarula.
So, since Natalia came home from Bolivia about a year ago, we have started this tradition. Saturday nights or Sunday afternoons with TV shows. I cook or bake a cake and she brings crisps or ice cream and then we watch. We have seen the two seasons of Pushing Daisies, a few episodes of True Blood, the first season of Game of Thrones and the last few seasons of Bones, of course. If it’s Saturday, she sometimes spends the night and then we make American pancakes for breakfast and watch some more.
And it’s such a liberating feeling, to have someone to share with. Even if hours pass without us uttering a single word except for the bare minimum (“pass me the chocolate sauce”), there is another kind of trust being built during these TV show marathons. We are sharing our need to be asocial, to get some time off from the chaos that is life and go on vacation into other, imagined universes. There is comfort in doing this together. And when we are done for the day, we get up from the couch, stretch our stiff backs and take the dishes out to the kitchen. We have shared a secret. Now our batteries are re-loaded and we are ready to face the world again.
Those TV show marathons with Natalia are among the things that I will miss the most when I’m away.
Katja Malmborg 