The TV Showdown: Who Controls the Remote?

by Leslie Bennetts

We fight about the fact that I don’t like watching TV with my husband, an activity he sees as sociable and I find emotionally alienating. We fight about the value of TV, which he regards as a vehicle for worthy cultural offerings and I view as a waste of time.

When I do succumb, we fight about the fact that I invariably regret it; even when kids aren’t dying on ER or gangster molls aren’t getting whacked on The Sopranos, the tamest of story lines can get me so riled up I don’t sleep for hours. Guess who feels guilty and gets mad at me?

And of course, being man and woman, we fight about the remote. My husband hates the fact that he has to watch TV in the living room instead of lying in bed channel-surfing, which he feels is any man’s God-given prerogative, sort of like having a penis. But every time he flicks from one channel to the next, I get absorbed in what’s going on and then he blithely hops to something else. Story interruptus makes me miserable.

“You don’t even let me skip the commercials!” my husband says accusingly. “How can you get emotionally involved in commercials?” Having lived for a couple of decades with a woman who is famous for weeping over telecommunications ads, he should know what a dumb question this is.

As for me, I simply don’t understand how men can be so disengaged that they don’t care whether the jumper jumped, or the child escaped from the kidnappers, or the detective apprehended the serial killer before he managed to murder her.