Knowing How it Ends
The other weekend, on the plane back home from Tampa, I spent most of the flight re-watching season two of Jane the Virgin.
Damn, I almost forgot about this show! I said to myself before immediately queueing it up and spending the next three-and-a-half hours excavating the memories of each episode.
I recalled watching with my old roommate, sitting on her oversized red corduroy couch, and thought I must be mistaken; that was too long ago. But later, I looked it up—season two aired in 2015. It was that long ago!
Whatever you want to call it—a guilty pleasure, a comfort watch—it’s not new, though I do think that, during (and since) the pandemic, it took on new meaning for me. There was that tweet going around from the BBC about a study that found the mental health crisis during the pandemic wasn’t as bad as it seemed, and all the people quote-tweeting apparent evidence to the contrary. A lot of these were extremely funny in a “rough chuckles” kind of way. It is hard to think back on the beginning, though I suppose, on the bright side, we can continue to look forward to Funky Kong Friday.
Anyways, it’s not like I don’t enjoy any new TV. I did see both seasons of The White Lotus, but I never watched Tiger King. I got mad about And Just Like That and immediately dove into Sex and the City instead. We watched Mad Men and The Wire and Friday Night Lights, joking (again) that Wallace and D don’t die; they’re just in Dillon. We’d get to the end of Seinfeld or Arrested Development and start over from the beginning.
But I think, in some fundamental way, my relationship with TV changed. At the end of the day, I want to be welcomed into a world I already know. I want suspense, but with an asterisk. There’s enough to worry about. When I’m anxious, there’s nothing better than another season of something I’ve seen before.
That would probably be my response to the BBC tweet. I can’t bring myself to watch The Last of Us, even though Pedro Pascal is very hot! Also, I guess used to turn on my color-changing smart lightbulb and record myself dancing alone in my apartment? It was a largely bad time, 2020. It was that long ago!
So, it goes without saying that I’ve kept watching Jane the Virgin ever since I got home. I’m on season three and rooting for all the things I already know will happen.