With September closing in we’ve decided now it’s that exact point in the year when it’s perfectly acceptable to decline every week night invitation (and weekend should you choose, we’re not judging) in favour of fat pants, the couch, a glass of red and your latest box set obsession. Hug your Netflix and hunker down, because you’re in for a roller coaster ride of emotion… the ten stages of falling in love with a new television show.
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Stage One: Holding out for a hero
You’re looking for something and you don’t really know what it is, but you know what it’s not. There is an audio-visual hole in your heart that only several seasons of drama can fill. Sure, you’ll flirt with a few options, maybe stick with them for a lazy afternoon before deciding you’re better off without. The search goes on. You need an fixation, not a fling.
Stage Two: Getting to know you
If a friend tells you breathlessly that Breaking Bad is the BEST THING EVER and you’re wondering what she might be on after you watch the first episode and just don’t get it, relax. Every TV addict knows that you have to give any new series a block of three to four episodes at the very least before you start to feel hooked. And it begins…
Stage Three: Can’t fight this feeling
When you’re removing your heels with one hand, your bra with the other and using your mouth to control the remote about three seconds after you rock in from work, you’re there. These people are now your people, their lives are your life and reality has zero attraction when you could be gazing into the eyes of your new onscreen love.
Stage Four: Making your mind up
About two series in to Friday Night Lights, it’s perfectly understandable to make life decisions after asking yourself “What would Tami Taylor do?” You’ll know full-on obsession is here when you use TV show logic in every aspect of your life, including dinner choices…
Stage Five: I can’t get no sleep
Sleep? Sleep?! Who has time for slumber when season one of Suits ended in such a cliffhanger? Before you know it, ‘just one more’ is your favourite refrain. By four am, you’re looking about as well as one of those zombies in The Walking Dead that you love so much.
Stage Six: You give love a bad name
Any TV show worth its salt will challenge you with a shocker that will break your heart when you least expect it. (Anyone who has seen season four of The Good Wife will understand.) It’s at that point you scream, cry, curse and swear you’re done with it forever. Before hastily downloading the next episode through your tears.
Stage Seven: Walk like a man, talk like a man
The best quotes from ‘your show’ are now your language. Which is fine when you’re trading in witty banter of the fierce female variety a la The Mindy Project. Less ok when you face a formal warning at work for addressing your colleagues with two profanities a second, inspired by The Wire. Dublin 6 and the mean streets of Baltimore are two very different places.
Stage Eight: To make you feel my love
You have become an evangelist. You’ll tell anyone who will listen how Orange is the New Black will “change your life!”. You hear a passing reference to it in the office and a new work BFF is born. You’ll find not-so-subtle ways to bring the conversation around to Pennsatucky, Taystee and Red wherever possible, and you’ll feel the need to explain to people why Morello is Rihanna, not Jessica Simpson.
Stage Nine: Breaking up is hard to do
You’ve known a move out of the White House was on the way ever since you started season seven of The West Wing, but when it comes down to it – knowing what was in store doesn’t make it any easier. You’ll go through the seven stages of grieving. That’s ok. You might want to write a letter to the network petitioning for a return. That’s less ok. Cop on now.
Stage Ten: Looking back…
Eventually, you’ll get over the trauma of saying goodbye. Time (and other TV) heals all wounds. You might not be able to speak about the end of How I Met Your Mother without welling up, but in time you’ll be able to talk about it fondly, be thankful for the memories. It’s like one of those really twee relationship advice memes; Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
