Opinions

The past few months seemed to be full of dread. Every morning I checked AM New York for new developments but the future was still uncertain. No, not because of the elections. It was due to something far more personal and important—the Writers Guild of America strike.

Luckily, as of February 26, the strike is over and new episodes are in production. Regular programming is resuming but I can’t forget about those months of re-runs– scarier than being slapped by Marshall from How I Met Your Mother. I had never thought of myself as dependent on television, but when push came to shove, I fell down.

Without my weekly dose of brain-numbing shows such as Gossip Girl, The Office and Grey’s Anatomy, I was completely out of the loop on the characters that only exist on weekday nights from 8 to 10 p.m. Such shows are not only a part of my home life, but also of my social life. For me and my friends, gym class usually means “jumping rope” in the hallway while talking about the latest developments in our favorite shows. During the strike, all that was left was exercise and gossip about actual people—how dull. How could our uninspiring lives compare to the polar bears, hatches and mysterious black clouds found on the Island in Lost?

And we teenagers aren’t the only ones hooked. When Gossip Girl first came out, a couple of my friends and I were discussing Upper East Side scandal on the train. We were quite loud, and a middle-aged woman overheard us. Instead of moving away, however, she started an hour-long debate with us about its glamorous female protagonists Blair and Serena. She was one of those nondescript subway riders you probably wouldn’t notice unless she was about to get off the train and leave a seat available, but here we were heatedly comparing Serena’s flowing blonde hair with Blair’s prim headbands.

During those three long months of the strike, I realized that something seemingly insignificant can have a huge impact on our lives. It doesn’t even matter that television is inane, shameless, and shallow. It gives people a medium to connect and relate to one another, whether it’s in school, a doctor’s waiting room or on the subway ride home.

And maybe that makes sense. After all, television has been a part of our daily routine ever since we first heard about that “sunny day” on Sesame Street.