Jenny Dunn Knows Good T.V.

I spent the past Friday night, as I spend most Friday nights, with a glass of Bella Serra Pinot Grigiot and my friends: Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte. This particular Friday, though, was different than the rest. My roommates and I were watching not just any eight episodes of "Sex and the City" - we were watching the final eight episodes, which I had never seen on account of both being abroad when they aired last spring and not having HBO On Demand.As the closing credits of "An American Girl in Paris: Part Deux" rolled, I took a last sip of my tear-diluted Bella Serra and wondered if I would have anything to look forward to ever again. This is what TV does to me: it creates a new, joyful world, full of romance and wit, and then yanks it away, making the real world seem that much more bleak and depressing in comparison.

I, like so many other women who write fluffy, unimportant journalistic pieces, fancy myself a Carrie Bradshaw of sorts. I may not have Carrie's (who I have to continually remind myself is a fictional character) experience when it comes to questions of sex, or cities, for that matter, but when it comes to T.V., I sure as hell can write about love.

The emotional attachment that one can feel towards a TV show is amazing. In high school, I had a TV show for every day of the week. My boyfriend at the time was generally not allowed to call me between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., as watching Triple H pummel Mankind on WWF "Smackdown" was obviously more important. I still, to this day, watch "All My Children" at least three times a week, a habit that I inherited from my mother, who has taped it every day since it began in 1970.

The question is: at what point does TV become a problem, a means of living our lives by watching rather than doing? How can we dump the one thing in our lives that has always been there for us and stop living vicariously?

You don't have to watch TV a lot to have a problem. I myself have cut back to only three shows that I watch religiously, although I have to admit that the occurrence is rare when I am found eating a meal anywhere other than in front of TBS.

The vicarious lifestyle is actually identified by a difficulty in distinguishing one's shows from reality. The characters are people that you aspire to date, like Seth Cohen, or aspire to be, like Jack Bauer. If one of them died (on the show), you would feel a very real sense of loss, like when Mitch Leary, Dawson's dad, was taken away from us so soon, before his son had even lost his virginity. They creep into your everyday vocabulary; you find yourself thinking, "That argyle sweater is sooo Charlotte."

I knew that I needed help when, in the midst of a marathon session with "Felicity," I found myself unable to determine if the phone was ringing on the show or in real life. Not that I'm currently doing anything to correct the problem. That's just when I knew for sure that I had one.

The utter hopelessness that I felt when "Sex and the City" ended on Friday night started some serious soul-searching. Am I going to continue to willingly jerk myself around by involving myself in such a destructive relationship, or am I going to cut myself free, no matter how much pain this possibility involves, and prove that I am strong, independent, and able to make it on my own?

Well, that's a tough question. Maybe I'm just a masochist, but the truth is, I like having something, as mindless as it may be, to look forward to every week. Okay, so it's a little sad. I want to marry a man who doesn't actually exist - Seth Cohen, obviously. I cry from joy when a fictional woman sees a picture of her fictional adopted Asian baby.

And, in the meantime, I'm out there in the world like everyone else, creating my own drama, attempting to find a real, live husband (or boyfriend, everyone has to start somewhere), and hoping for something so joyful, it might just make me cry.