My View From the Couch

I love TV. I even have a PhD in the stuff. I find it hard to talk about what I love about TV. The vernacular used within the field of TV criticism doesn’t seem to make sense of what I love about TV–often it is too bogged down in plot points and greater narrative issues. These have never been concerns of mine. I don’t necessarily watch on a plot level (I don’t read this way either, fwiw). I watch TV for how it makes me feel. And even then I don’t necessarily mean whether or not there is a dramatic moment, or if a character has a triumph or a tragedy. To me, these are still plot-specific. And I do love that TV does that–I love drama, in particular, because I am often able to lose myself in the story. But that’s not what I mean either. For me, TV is at its best when it connects us to the world around us. When it makes me, sitting alone in my living room, feel connected to other people living around me and in the world.