Take me to TV Land

A while ago, a relatively new friend became a more consistent member of the threesome I most often run with, and I think the friend who's been in "best friend" position the past few years began to feel a bit jealous. I think she was afraid she'd be displaced if someone new moved into the triangle. This is ridiculous, of course. Not only was no one being replaced, but the new friend was actually filling a slot we'd had vacant for a while. You see, we needed a fourth.

Bridget Jones may have needed just Jude and Shazzer, but maybe if she'd had a fourth, she wouldn't have been quite so scattered. So many of the great (and even not-so-great) "girls clubs" are foursomes: when I was a kid, there was Blair, Natalie, Tootie, and Jo... then Rose, Dorothy, Blanche, and Sophia... Julia, Suzanne, Mary Jo, and Charlene... More recently, of course, it was Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha... Even Mary Richards didn't spend all her time with just Rhoda; she had Phyllis and Georgette to round out the mix as well.

Maybe I'm placing too much emphasis on fictional lives here. It wouldn't be the first time I've blurred the line between television and reality. I remember one night several years ago, when my then-roommate's boyfriend was visiting, and he listened quietly while we talked about something that was happening between a group of people whose names weren't familiar to him. Maybe he just wasn't too quick, or maybe we were talking with a bit too much interest and animation about what were not real people... All I know is the look on his face when he realized that Pacey and Jen were people on TV and not actual humans in our circle of influence was alternately embarrassing and hilarious for us.

Nevertheless, I've been thinking a lot recently about the neighborhood of make-believe where my television friends live, and I've come to a simple conclusion. I want to live in TV Land.

I don't mean the Dick Van Dyke and Pleasantville TV Land, where everyone is neatly pressed and no problem is too complicated for dad to solve with a few sage words and a glass of cold milk, nor do I mean the TV Land I grew up with, where every family was loving and tight-knit, and every Huxtable and Keaton girl had a vast and stylish wardrobe and two nice boys vying for her attention. I mean the modern TV Land--the one I see today.

Supposedly art imitates life, so if you can call TV "art" (it's a stretch sometimes, I know), then presumably the world we see on TV is just a more clever, more entertaining, better dressed version of our own. It's strange, though, how the way that idealized world is portrayed changes over time. Yes, I know there's currently no shortage of traditional sitcoms featuring families and kids in various incarnations of the American nuclear family, but the trend for most of the shows popular in my demographic in recent years is the "friends as family" convention. That's the TV Land I can get behind--the one I want to be the imitation of life around me.

I watch Sex & the City and don't feel so alone as a single 31-year old woman. I can harbor the illusion that there are hundreds of us all around me. I'm not a cliche; I'm an archetype. I watch reruns of Seinfeld and suddenly it's OK to begrudge driving 30 miles on a perfectly good Saturday in order to "see the baby." I watch Will & Grace and feel it's not only forgivable but entirely the norm to give in to laziness and shallow interests, to have a better grasp on the names of celebrity couples' new babies* than the name of my City Council representative.** Perhaps most important, I watch old episodes of Friends and I try to believe that even as my friends get married and have babies, they'll still live right next door and I'll still see them every day.

I remember when Nick at Nite first advertised the spin-off station, TV Land... The ads said that if the new network wasn't on your channel lineup, you should simply call your cable provider and say, "Take me to TV Land!"

Oh, if only it were that simple.


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* Violet and Matilda--we all knew that, right?

** This is actually a bad example, as I do know the name of my City Council representative, but you know what I mean.