In the past two years, I’ve played match maker for three different couples. I am no cupid, nor do I garner an uncanny, unmatched knowledge of relationships based on loads of personal experience; I do watch a lot of Dawson’s Creek, though. Combine a little common sense and the life lessons of the Creek and there isn’t an interpersonal situation I cannot help diffuse with a reasonable recommendation or assistance to the matter.
The quarky kids on Dawson’s covered pretty much the entire emotional gauntlet of life in their six seasons of prepubescent hormones and Paula Cole-soundtracked moments. A few viewings and there isn’t a real situation you’ll encounter without being able to draw on knowledge of how it could potentially play out. This helps determine the best advice to give or the analysis you want to proceed with. Television is a life coach like no other.
This is only problematic because television rarely attempts to step beyond entertainment. Aside from the cable channels focused on learning and the occasional PBS show, television is a scripted and controlled hypothetical universe. Its episodic issues play out life in the most interesting way possible, it handles the situations on a dramatic and conflict-oriented route to a resolution, not necessarily the best one. That’s why taking life lessons and advise from television should be problematic.
But for some reason, it’s not. My 3-0 record of relationship counseling based on knowledge garnered from prime time melodramas proves this. But why?
It’s probably because I’m not the only one who has seen these dramas, and learned these life lessons. Just like me, people have seen the same episodes and dramas that I have seen, and as such, expect their lives to play out in a similar fashion. We draw our perceptions, anticipations and expectations from past experience, and television vicariously provides us this. We can feel like we own these lessons because we were with Pacey when he went through them and when we are in the same situations, we want and expect them to play out the same way.
As much as we think we are unique, we live our lives just like the lives of the fictional characters on television. We make decisions based on these viewed experiences, and the people we encounter draw their opinions from the same setting. It is self-fulfilling and it makes television our number one behavioral coach.
Sure, it might make things interesting, but it doesn’t make them easy.