Breakups are hard. I think we’ve all been there. There was a show that you loved so much. Maybe it was because it was such a clever idea, unlike anything you’d ever seen on TV before. Or maybe it just had that actor that you really liked. Or maybe you liked the books. For the first season (or seasons) you watched it religiously and loved every minute.
One day, it’s just not as good anymore. Then there’s another show premiering at the same time that you want to watch. Show number one gets demoted in your queue, but hey, you’ll get to it eventually. Until you don’t. Suddenly you have 11 episodes taking up space on your DVR and you know deep down that it’s over. Why is it so hard to just cancel that series recording?!
Right now I’m in the midst of two such breakups. Neither is easy, and if I’m honest, neither of them is going very well. These are two shows that I once loved. I’m hoping that talking about it here can finally help me move on.
First up, I’m about to admit something that I’m not proud of, but here it goes. For the first few seasons, I loved The Vampire Diaries. I liked it so much that for 2 or 3 years it won the weekly battle for Thursdays at 8:00, which we all know can be a tough timeslot. I won’t pretend that it had nothing to do with how hot Ian Somerhalder is, but let’s move past that. Overall it was pretty entertaining. Vampires. Werewolves. Abs. Good stuff.*
*FYI that will most likely be the most girly paragraph I ever write in this blog. I apologize.
I don’t know exactly when I started getting bored, but it hit me like a brick wall. At this point I truly couldn’t care less about some ridiculous undead love triangle, no matter how hot those three parties might be. Or maybe it’s just the absurd overabundance of supernatural creatures with varying degrees of humanity gracing our TV screens today.
Despite the fact that I truly don’t care what happens anymore, and the fact that it is taking up precious space on my DVR, I still haven’t been able to bring myself to delete it. I have no idea why. Maybe I’m worried that one day I’ll wake up and miraculously care again. I think the odds of this are extremely low, but it’s the best explanation I’ve been able to come up with so far.
My other future ex is not nearly as embarrassing. I have watched every single season of How I Met Your Mother. Even the last few which have been increasingly terrible. This show was fantastic when it premiered 9ish years ago. No one had ever done anything like it. Barney was hilarious. It has produced several episodes that I will always remember as genuinely good television. And I’ve definitely spent some time trying to figure out which of my friends could most easily be conned into a Slap Bet.
Unfortunately, as with most shows that hold on past their expiration date, things turned sour a couple of years ago. The characters became too predictable. Ted became too pathetic. The hijinks became too ridiculous. Worst of all, it stopped being funny.
Yet I still force myself to watch it every week. I have no idea why. I told myself I needed to hang on long enough to meet the mother. I’d put in too much time to give up before then. Now we’ve met. What else is holding me hostage?!
The thing is, there is SO MUCH good TV now. I hate that my fear of moving on is keeping me tied down to the bad. I know some people “hate watch” shows, which actually sounds pretty fun. (And it sort of sounds like what I do any time I’m forced to watch a romantic comedy.) But that’s not what I’m doing here, I’m just genuinely not enjoying them anymore.
I guess a TV breakup is just like any other. Of course you don’t want anyone to get hurt, but it’s going to happen. It’s better to just rip the band-aid off so everyone can move on. It’s not healthy to drag things out.
So now that it looks like I’m about to have some free DVR space, anybody out there have any shows you’d like to set me up with?