My Guilty Pleasure -- No. 2

I started a series of "guilty pleasures" a long time ago and only made one post on it. I guess the series aspect of it never panned out, so I thought I would try again and admit to another guilty pleasure that I have and indulge in on a weekly basis.

Desperate Housewives.

I know, I know. Pure trash airing on a Sunday night, but I can't help myself. The first season hooked me with it's plot about a character's suicide, the torrid affair between an unhappily married wife and a gardener, a mother struggling to juggle her duties as wife/mother/professional career woman... There were so many interesting stories in season one.

The show probably hit it's stride around season three and has slowly but steadily slipped since then. The characters have become shrewish and it is difficult to empathize with them. The fact that the actresses themselves are obviously ageing but not being allowed to do so with dignity is a little off-putting. The plot lines, which were always a bit stretched, are now past the line of being absurd.

Yet I keep watching because I have this obsession with shows that I've begun...I have to watch them from beginning to end and I've only broken that rule once--with Gossip Girl. Enough said, I've purged that show from my memory anyway.

More on topic--in the most recent episode of DH one of the husbands gives his wife an ultimatum--choose to side with your friend (whose teenage son had run over his grandmother) or stand by me. He seems extremely serious and pan the camera to the pleading eyes of his wife.

Since watching that episode, I've given quite a bit of thought to ultimatums. When are they right or fair to make? If you truly love someone, will you ever give them an ultimatum? When does making forcing an ultimatum simply become manipulation?

I don't have the answers to any of those questions and I would guess that all the answers would be situational anyway. There is no black-and-white, right-and-wrong rule to using ultimatums. I would hope that in my relationships I will never have to, but who knows? People are unpredictable and human/flawed.

Cue next scene: pleading housewife knocks on said friend's door and enters with her two children trailing behind her.

Sometimes it feels wrong giving into ultimatums. The whole relationship changes when you allow yourself to be controlled or manipulated by someone who says that they love you.

And this is why I love Desperate Housewives. It leads me to these interesting thoughts.

My Love Affair With Television.

I'll admit it, I am having a love affair with tv shows.

I am currently watching/have avidly watched 20+ shows including: LOST, The Office, 30 Rock, Desperate Housewives, Veronica Mars, Arrested Development, Ugly Betty, NCIS, Robin Hood BBC, Skins, The O.C., The Tudors, Gossip Girl, Heroes, Tell Me That You Love Me, Sex And The City, Pushing Daisies, Chuck, House MD, Kyle XY, Jericho, Dead Like Me, Moonlight, and more that I probably can't bring to mind at the moment.

I've decided that tv is essentially for me, an escape from the realities of life.
I'd prefer to be wrapped up in the lives and antics of fictional characters than to think about my life.

I can't watch a show and censor the speed that I am watching it at. I sate myself it in, consuming it greedily and quickly. I've completed almost two seasons of The O.C. in about a week and a half.

I can clearly recall when I first started watching LOST, and how life seemed to fade away and stop for me, revolving mainly around the mysteries, characters, and intrigues of LOST. I would sit in my room for hours, days on end, watching with interest, the plotlines unfold. No one would disturb and I could be away from friends and family for days before any interest would spark in me about them.

It's so easy for me to fall into a tv show, to become obsessed with it, and to spend all my time thinking about it.

Sometimes I wonder when this love affair will end. Sometimes I hope it will never end, sometimes I pray that it's timely demise will arrive soon. It all depends on how my week is going, how my life is progressing.

All love affairs must end. The question is - when?