I watch a lot of TV.

Sure, I am more devoted to my shows than I am to my four looming term papers, all due this week. Sure, I get about three hours of sleep a night because I lie awake, glassy-eyed, remote in hand. But when I’m gaining powerful life lessons from Addison Montgomery and Audrina Patridge, it hardly seems to matter. A double-shot is a small price to pay for the pedagogical gems imparted by Thursday’s network lineup.

The thing is, though, I’m picky. I’ve begun to feel myself getting antsy during 90210. I used to live and breathe The OC, but now my eyes wander and I multitask while re-watching episodes that once made me weep with happiness and fulfillment. I turn to these shows for that warm, little glow that once was, but I’m left feeling empty and unmoved.

But on the other hand, I cannot rip my eyes away from the three — four, if you count Spencer — blond drama queens who rule The Hills. I lap up the wisdom of Entourage’s Ari Gold, and I recently found myself digging through the Felicity archives, happily listening to the life musings she records on cassette and sends to her former french tutor. I used to wince at Gold’s crude remarks and I used to think that nothing short of a weekend-long paleontology seminar could be as boring as Felicity.

So what has become of me? Why have my TV tastes so severely altered?

Well, I guess it’s not hard to see what has changed. I have grown up. I’m in college. And now I have license to be a TV snob. We all do.

While once upon a time, you may have empathized with a kid whose sole mission in life was to sneak out of his bedroom window to have a midnight drink with friends in the high school parking lot, now you might care just a wee bit more about George O’Malley’s professional crises and Felicity Porter’s indecision regarding med school. A couple years ago, you may have deeply felt for Seth Cohen as he desperately tried to find peers who accepted and admired him. But now, you’re more interested in Brooke Davis’s journey towards self-acceptance.

So, here we are. TiVo reveals that we’ve grown up.

And Gossip Girl doesn’t count. That’s not normalcy for any age. We can all appreciate that from a distance… and for the trust-fund babies among us, maybe from arm’s length.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.