#54 Becoming Addicted to Any TV Show in a Marathon

One thing unemployment does is it breaks down the wall between television snobs and the crap that is played non-stop on TV. There are people out there who swear they don’t watch TV unless it’s on HBO or Showtime…or until they’re unemployed. When a TV snob loses a job, he or she also loses the strength to turn away from the shows that beckon at odd hours of the day after running out of things to do on the internet.

One of the best ways to become hooked to any possible television show is to stumble across some mini marathon running in the middle of the day. Given the choice between watching some horrible sitcom like Everybody Loves Raymond or watching Oprah twist everything so the subject goes back to her, some might choose the former. At first, the show will serve as background noise until a zinger reels in their full attention and they become hooked, telling friends, “You know what? It’s actually pretty funny.” Soon enough, the unemployed will start perusing the upcoming episodes schedule, setting the TiVO to record, requesting the first few seasons on DVD from the library, or even trying to slowly download it now that it’s been off the air for several years. 

Of course, unemployment doesn’t just provide folk with the time to watch only bad television, it’s also a chance for them to watch old favorites like Roseanne, or the shows everyone’s been telling them to watch for years. Some might be the “best show ever” like Battlestar Galactica, which just ended its run as a series, or shows that were once great, then sucked, and now starting to get good again, like Lost. There’s nothing as rewarding as going on an unemployment vacation for several weeks and returning home to a nice TiVO’d Lost mini marathon of your own. Or it could just be time to mourn the end of great shows like Arrested Development and Six Feet Under (which plays in three hour blocks during the afternoon, albeit censored) by repeatedly watching those DVDs. 

It might be embarrassing to admit that 24 is now a guilty pleasure, thanks to its availability on Netflix’s instant streaming. “Find a job!” horrified TV snob friends will yell. “You could do so much more with your time!” Sure, that might be true. Your roommates will judge you for being in the same exact position when they went to bed and woke up for work, not showered, still dressed in sullied pajamas. But there’s just something so special about discovering a “new” show for the first time, and wanting to devote your entire life to it until it ends with you weeping through the final episode, knowing there will be no more marathon TV sessions from 10pm to 6am until the next set of DVDs is ready to pick up from the library. Until then, there’s always marathon reality TV shows. Yes, The Real World still exists after all these years!

Tags: low standards, not getting dressed, not taking showers, tivo, TV addiction, Unemployed Activities