My Addiction

This is just a seven-minute free-write I did one day when I couldn't sleep. So it was really at night. I'm an addict. Read about it.

It should be shaming, but I do not even care. Even knowing I should be appalled at myself and judge anyone like me, I have to admit I am far from afraid to admit to this addiction. It takes 30 minutes of mindless entertainment for me to become attached to something that is wholly unreal. Not in the cool, surrealistic, let’s-be-amazed-that-that-happened sort of way, but in the obvious it’s-actually-fiction sort of way. Once an episode of one of my sitcoms is over, I freak out and wait impatiently for however many months it takes until the DVD comes out.

I am totally addicted to sitcoms.

And honest to God, I do not care how pathetic it seems from the outside.

“The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.” I gotta admit. That makes me smile. I admitted that I have a problem and there is no way between now and well hell freezes over that I will “recover” from my addiction. If anything, I will feed it and allow it to grow like an annoying weed.

There is nothing about the patheticality (yeah, I made up a word. Shakespeare did.) of a situation comedy obsession and addiction that makes me feel like a loser or feel ashamed. There is nothing better than sitting down on a comfy couch or laying in my tiny bed and mindlessly watching as a cast of characters share their fictitious lives with me. Lowly, boring, untalented, mildly funny me.

A sitcom. All it takes to create a sitcom is three or four mildly funny people in their mid-twenties or early thirties. Add one slutty character who lies about their age and you have yourself a winner. Of course, there has to be at least one really good looking male character and one extraordinarily thin, gorgeous female character. When you stir it all together, you have a hilarious conglomeration that I should be ashamed to laugh about.

Though I do not feel like I owe the world an explanation of my addiction, it seems like I should share my addiction to others. These “essay” could be used as a type of AA for sitcom addicts. Yeah, there are others. I know several. This piece could be something that helps people admit they have an addiction. Really, AA is a bad example. This is a non-hurtful addiction. One that I love. And will never get rid of.

This is why I am not afraid to admit to my addiction. Plus, the characters are people. They are fake people who are possessed by real people who take on the characteristics of a new person. It is one person becoming another and living that character until some executive decides they are not funny enough and kill them off. Or just make three of six characters “move on” in “life,” which of course means the show has lost its thunder. Even though this thunder is only lost because one writer got mad at another and the politics take over the show. They have many terms for this: artistic arguments, artistic dispute, artistic bitching, etc. You have no idea how many times I have been mad at producers, writers, directors, and TV actors and actresses for not being able to control their emotions so that I could continue living in the lives of fake people. When I say it like that, I feel a tad more pathetic, I must admit.

The final episode of “Friends” makes me tear up every time I watch it. A friend of mine told me his grandmother died today. I felt sorry for him, but there were no tears – at all. I think of the final episode of this epic sitcom and immediately put myself in the shoes of Jenifer Aniston, Courtney Cox Arquette, David Crane, Marta Kaufman, David Schwimmer, and everyone else related to the show (not even including those who watched it faithfully from week to week) and mourn for them. Can you even imagine seeing the same people every day for 10 years, growing completely attached to each other, loving each other and watching it end because it is “time?” Oh, and imagine watching the set get taken down. That is like actually watching 10 years of your life just drop down to the ground as you watch it.

I put myself in the shoes of both the character and the actor when I watch the “end of an era.” I feel like I actually have a connection to these people. I can hardly describe the emotion that flows through my thoughts as I think about how hard it would be to have a funny line in the middle of a dramatic ending to an incredible TV show.