TV Daydreams

We have discovered a whole new world of TV addiction I’m afraid to say. We have given in (during this staycation I’ve elicited the complicity of my husband to this new obsession) to watching TV shows on DVD. It’s something I didn’t really ever understand the appeal of until I got the entire series of Firefly on DVD for Christmas. There is something extremely appealing about being able to put on a show that you know will only last about 50 minutes as background noise or to pass the time and know for certain that there will be zero damn commercials. It’s a wonderful invention.

So we’ve used the last week to start watching shows that always intrigued me but, because we never got HBO or Showtime, passed me by (much to the dismay of my inner pop culture freak). Shows like Weeds, Dexter, The Wire and Deadwood. And now we are completely and irrevocably sucked in to these shows. I’m glad that two of them are finished in a way because I know that this new found obsession is finite in two of four cases. Which is a very good thing since absolutely none of them are in any way child friendly. They are crass and foul-mouthed and hilarious and crude and violent and brilliant and witty.

Finding myself laughing at a suburban mom drug dealer in WAY over her head, or a serial killer with a moral code is a bit on the unsettling side at first, I’ll give you that. But that quickly moves over for the pure joy in watching something brilliant, even when it does make you uncomfortable or gives you goose bumps. And there will always be something flat compelling about watching someone just be really, really bad. Whether that is in the Wild West or the streets of Baltimore. In these four shows alone, you can see just about the whole spectrum of human nature and failure, fear and fortuned. It’s fascinating.

Because at the end of the day, I am a suburban mom making it through the day loving my family to the best of my ability. I think it’s ok to borrow someone else’s daydreams occasionally.