A few months ago, a study came out saying that unhappy people watched more television which prompted me to ask if watching TV makes you unhappy and my answer was, of course, no. In fact, I specifically stated that watching TV actually makes me happier overall.

So the recent study that watching TV relieves loneliness was not a surprise to me. In my previous post, I actually predicted it:

Of course, one telling aspect of this study (what you didn’t think I’d turned this post into an opportunity to whine about personal problems did you?) is that it covers 30 years of television and television has only recently become something more than mere escapism. What was once a rare occurrence on television — serialized storytelling and complex relationships — is now a mainstay. Television, in the intervening years, has grown up. It is more than a time filler now. It can and does explore life with equal or greater depth and insight as other more respected media. And in another 30 years, after a generation of people who have grown up with intelligent and thought-provoking television, the data will tell a different tale.

It didn’t quite take 30 years for TV to shift the data, but my point remains. One of the reasons I enjoy television more than I do movies is that the longer form of storytelling allows stronger connections to the characters. This goes beyond a need for social connectedness, though this study shows that this is clearly a factor, and into the ability of television to ask deeper and more fundamental questions than film.

Movies often seem grander in some respects, but I think that most of that view comes from film’s greater opportunity, not greater ability, to ask these sorts of questions. In two hours, a lot of ideas can be examined but they cannot be explored to any real depth. In addition, in two hours characters can be examined, but they will most likely not change in any appreciable amount. But television dramas have characters that change drastically. A movie could attempt such changes, but it would be seen as absurd by critics; in two hours, for those sorts of changes to occur would break the audiences willing suspension of disbelief.

In addition, movies require a real dramatic thrust and driving action, and so the framing of the characters always relies on that structure, unless you’re doing a very indie film with no expectation of heavy distribution. Television, on the other hand, can explore multiple characters by virtue of their long-term status. In a movie that tells the same high level story as Lost or Kyle XY or other character dramas, you might get some amount of time devoted to side characters, but nowhere near the attention to detail that television offers; with television, you can truly get immersed in a world.

It’s that immersive quality that makes television more capable of not only examining a world and its inhabitants but also touching you with the answers it uncovers.

As you all know, I Love TV. Which is why I was neither surprised nor quite expecting a new study that says that unhappy people watch more TV. It wasn’t particularly surprising to me because when you have a series of posts dedicated to how depressed you are, it’s kind of implied you’re at least slightly unhappy. But I didn’t really expect it because TV is actually one of the things in my life that gives me happiness.

This study talks about how TV is escapism — which is true of any entertainment media, even though the same study says that happier people read more books — but in many ways, good television holds a mirror up to you and examines the various aspects of humanity. A few years ago, I was at a (cliche alert) crossroads in my life. I was around half way through a university degree which was promising but didn’t hold the appeal it did when I first applied. Beyond that, my faith was dwindling. For years, I had a constantly evolving understanding of God and religion. When I first had my religious re-awakening in high school, a lot of people thought it was because I had a crush on one of the girls that went to my church, but the fact is that I simply wanted to understand God better. I was experiencing teenage angst and wanted to figure what “all this” is about.

My faith grew over those years but ultimately I found myself having an understanding of God that differed and contradicted the one that both the Bible taught and that my church taught. Because of my growing skepticism of psychics, ESP, and other paranormal phenomenon and my growing understanding of how science explained the universe, I no longer thought that Jesus was actually the son of God. I still believed that he was a wise man likely sent by God to teach people a newer better way to live and worship, but I could no longer consider myself a Christian.

So, I was confused about life, the meaning of it all, and a few other things. Around that time, I started rewatching Babylon 5, a show that I hadn’t watched in quite some time, and I think it’s safe to say that it changed my life. I went from a mass of self-doubt and uncertainty about pretty much everything to having a very solid understanding of myself and the way I wanted to live in this world. I still consider Babylon 5 one of the best shows ever made, and almost certainly the best sci-fi show ever made.

There are a lot of times throughout my life that TV has helped me. Not because it let me forget about my sadness for a few minutes, but because I discovered new things. The long, drawn out character development that happens in television allows you to connect more intimately with their lives and in turn make discoveries about yourself.

Of course, one telling aspect of this study (what you didn’t think I’d turned this post into an opportunity to whine about personal problems did you?) is that it covers 30 years of television and television has only recently become something more than mere escapism. What was once a rare occurrence on television — serialized storytelling and complex relationships — is now a mainstay. Television, in the intervening years, has grown up. It is more than a time filler now. It can and does explore life with equal or greater depth and insight as other more respected media. And in another 30 years, after a generation of people who have grown up with intelligent and thought-provoking television, the data will tell a different tale.

I haven’t dreamt much recently. I haven’t dreamt at all, to be honest. When it’s already too late to get a good night’s sleep a finally crawl into bed and wonder if it would matter if I woke up the next morning. I wake up, often late for work, seconds later. The hour long dreams that would take place during an inadvertent 20 minute nap have been replaced by a frightening silence. The idea that dreams have some greater meaning doesn’t hold much water with me but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a purpose. Dreams give us something to which we can aspire. They are literally the wildest dreams of our imagination. The things that would be impossible to conceive of in the plain buttoned down world become commonplace and our mind revels in the freedom to imagine.

I never dreamed about the past. In high school, I dreamt of great love, both emotional and physical. When Laura and I were together and happy, I imagined the future. I imagined the fights we’d have and I imagined the nights when we’d gaze into each other’s eyes and drift to sleep smiling. Everything had a saccharine veneer but it was never cloying. Being in a real relationship made me realize not only that the slow motion montages prevalent in romantic comedies were unrealistic, but also that they were undesirable. Those moments would pale in comparison to just sitting around making fun of bad movies together, or laughing at dead baby jokes. It’s absolutely horrific, absolutely despicable, and absolutely endearing.

Whatever it is that we imagine in dreams is random. Sometimes, it’s our last thought of the night twisted by the random impulses surging through our brain as REM sleep drives us further into our subconscious imagination. It can be a fantasy world, with action and adventure. And it can be a canvas on which the problems of the real world are painted. Beyond the fact that some of my most vibrant and original ideas come from that precious dream scape, what’s so depressing about my dreamless summer is what it could mean. To me, dreams have always represented the elusive possibilities of the future. In that undiscovered country of the future, anything could happen. Love could be lost, love could be won. Dreams were always a way for me to see the future as I would like it.

This lack of dreaming is not contentment, it’s resignation.

In fire.

With each new week, my depression gets worse. It’s been headed towards “crippling” since two months ago when my former girlfriend decided that she didn’t want me in her life at all anymore. This is going to be a series of posts discussing, most likely in a non-linear fashion, my history with her. Given my current heart-broken state I may over-glamorize sometimes, but I’ll do my best to maintain some semblance of objectivity. What this will accomplish is a mystery to me, but I feel it needs to be done.

When my penultimate year of high school started, I decided I needed a job. I had no experience and I was a fairly shy guy, but somehow I got a job as a floor-person at a nearby Zellers. And so had she. During the first few shifts I was being trained I noticed her. I was 18 and she was 15 but even then I saw her and immediately thought “I want to get to know her.” I didn’t get a chance then; I was still being trained, so I was moving all over the store and only saw her that one time. I didn’t see her again until over a year later.

In my final year of high school — which was grade 13, or OAC, at the time — I started seeing her on the floor. We started off fairly innocently. Somehow, our shared love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer made it into one of our conversations. Along the way, I told her things I knew that she didn’t about the shows we both loved. I told her about TV shows she’d like, bands she’d love, and anything else I could think of. One of the more vivid memories from that time was of me buying School House Rock on DVD and her talking about how much she wanted to see it, but that wouldn’t happen until the summer.

As I neared the end of the school year I realized something: now that I was done school I would no longer have friends. I spent much of high school with friends having great conversations but I never really got to know them all too well outside of the context of the classroom. Because of this, once school was over I’d probably never hang out with them again. In retrospect, I don’t think this was as scary as I once thought; I would’ve made friends in university and the people I knew well enough would still be my friends. But it was that fear that made me take a giant leap in my life.

One day, while working with her, I attempted to deftly introduce a specific topic to our conversation. I talked about how much I really enjoy romantic comedies and yet I couldn’t go to them with my male friends because it wasn’t the kind of thing they were into. I had no idea if this was true, but I did enjoy romantic comedies and I did want someone to see them with. I talked about how you can’t reveal your more sensitive side to your guy friends because you had to be macho with them. That is, of course, complete and utter bullshit but she didn’t know that so I was free to inform her of the politics of male friendship however I saw fit. Luckily she decided it was a good idea to have a “non-date” with me and we went to see Alex and Emma.

I’ve been known to do something thinking it was for one reason when subconsciously my reasoning is later revealed to be completely different. So, at the time, maybe I was really fooling myself into thinking “this was a great way to get a new friend to go see movies with” or “she’ll be fun to see romantic comedies with” but to look back on my actions I’d have to be delusional to think that this wasn’t my very poor, very lame attempt at wooing a girl. Fortunately for me, she had a crush on me. I was known as “Cute Service Boy” or CSB to her friends and the idea of even a “non-date” with me excited her.

So we went to see the movie and we had a great time. By then, school was essentially over, summer was starting and she and I had been talking online fairly steadily. We were no longer tied to coincident shifts at work to associate and so I invited her to a Buffy/Movie marathon. This wasn’t a normal marathon though, because I had the house mostly to myself for a week straight because my parents were going back to Newfoundland. My sister was still there but she and I have an unspoken agreement to avoid each other unless absolutely necessary; we never really got past the childhood sibling antagonism stage of our relationship. So for five days straight, she would come over to my house somewhere between 10 and 12 in the morning and wouldn’t leave until sometime after 10 at night. We watched obscene amounts of television, watched all the movies we’d talked about that one of us hadn’t yet seen (and along the way added even more to that list), and eaten obscene amounts of pizza. Everything was innocent then. Well, not really innocent. Though we only sat on the same couch, already I wanted to kiss her and hold her. That week is such a fleeting memory but the emotions it stirred rock me to this day.

After that, she would come over and watch movies or we’d go to the theatre almost every second day. It didn’t take long for us to run out of romantic comedies to see together and branch out into other movies. One of the earliest examples was Terminator 3. A fairly drastic departure from our original target film but by then that premise had been essentially forgotten. As strange as it may seem, some of my earliest romantic thoughts — real romantic thoughts, not the kind you have when you’re staring at a girl across the cafeteria — come from that viewing of Terminator 3. The reason being that it was in that theatre that she and I held hands for the first time. It was tentative, it was hesitant, and neither of us acknowledged it when the movie was over but there it was.

Obviously, I’m an immature man-child because when I decided I wanted to kiss her I didn’t actually kiss her. No, I decided that the best way to invoke a kiss was to tease and tickle. If little children do it to show they like a girl, why couldn’t I? Of course, maybe it was because I loved knowing that I was making her laugh. It was a slow-going process. I would tickle her and she’d recede. I would pursue her until we were much closer than friends usually are. Eventually, after the tickling stop, with our faces mere centimetres away, I finished the pursuit and placed my lips on hers. It was tentative, it was hesitant, but this time when it was over we looked into each others eyes we smiled and kissed again.