The TV Showdown: Who Controls the Remote?

by Leslie Bennetts

(Page 7 of 7)

For other couples, television can actually provide a way to bond. “I’m a TV junkie,” confesses Meredith Beebe, a stay-at-home mother of two small children in

Raleigh, N.C. “I really enjoy any kind of television. My husband is not as into sitcoms and reality shows as I am, but we both enjoy watching Scrubs and football and HBO shows like The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. I think laughing together is a really fun thing to do, and relating together on some level feels good, so I really look forward to that time when we’re watching something together.”Beebe, whose mother was a Ph.D. and an opera fan who also loved to watch soap operas, has little patience with those cultural elitists who turn up their noses at television. “I embrace it,” she says. “It’s a part of our culture that’s fun, and if you know how to have balance in your life, it’s fine. You don’t have to be a snob about it.”Oops, caught in the act. But even I have a guilty secret. I have never admitted this to my husband, but when I’m out of town on a business trip, staying alone in a hotel, I turn on the television for company.

Although I’m often in a country where I don’t speak the language, I nevertheless find myself channel-surfing through programs as people shout at each other in Arabic or wail in Urdu or declare their love in Swahili.

My utter lack of comprehension means I don’t get emotionally involved in any of them; I can watch with curiosity and complete dispassion, like an anthropologist studying exotic tribes.But if someone picks up a scalpel, I’m outta there.

Leslie Bennetts is a writer who lives in New York with her husband, two children, one dog, two fish, and three televisions.