There are some things in life that every person needs: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the perfect show to watch. People watch TV to escape the bleak reality that is our real life. It’s a way to find joy and feel connected to the world of new characters and relate their happiness to your own. When I reflect on the last 4 years of my life, I can directly relate each time period to a show I was binging.
My freshman year of high school, that show was The Vampire Diaries. Watching Damon and Stefan fight over who loved Elena more, all while she couldn’t pick a brother, instilled the fundamental truth in my life that “it’s okay to them love both”. Since then, I never found myself in the position where having two good things in life was an issue and I learned to appreciate everything for their own differences. And no, I’m not talking about men.
My sophomore year I started watching New Girl with my best friend. We quickly realized that not only were we as iconic as Jess and Cece, but laughing together over Winston singing “Defying Gravity” or Schmidt and Nick bickering about True American, brought us closer together and started the shift from our friendship to becoming best friends. Honestly, the end of that show caused a seasonal depression (show attachment is real) and that correlated with my grey sweats making an appearance.
But junior year I was told to watch Gossip Girl, and finally I had something other than my static life to obsess over. Amidst studying for the ACT and describing a life event which I felt prepared me for college, watching the most intense and passionate enemies to lovers finally say those magical three words to each other made life have a little bit of shimmer. Honestly, Chuck and Blair taught me the most about love. The way they always made sure the other person was happy, even if they never knew, showed me what it means to sacrifice your own happiness for the person you love. The way Blair prayed that God would save Chuck even if it meant her child died, or how Chuck made sure she didn’t make a mistake marrying the wrong man, showed me that when you love someone, you will do literally anything to make their life even a little bit better. Their dynamic and love for each other could be studied for years to come.
After leaving the Upper East Side, the groutfits made a reappearance but I was saved by Meredith Grey herself. While I was a couple years late to the Grey’s Anatomy fandom, it only took me a semester to watch 21 seasons of Seattle Grace Hospital tragically changing to the Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. As a second semester senior who was ready to Gig ‘em, I had nothing to do except cry every other episode. No spoilers here, but I could truly feel pieces of my heart break off every time someone died or left. The only thing that could make me feel better was watching more, and while this doesn’t sound like it was productive to my mental health, it did show me that becoming a doctor is NOT my future. While I would love to be best friends with Lexie, that dream quickly crashed (I’m sorry) when I saw them standing for 13+ hours in surgery with no bathroom or food or sleep breaks.
I honestly think Grey’s Anatomy changed my brain chemistry because of how emotionally invested I was in this universe. Eventually I had to stop because it was dragging and the plot was repeating itself with new characters (MAGAC was the best) but the end of the show correlated with the end of my high school experience, and it felt almost poetic. That summer before college, I went into an extremely depressive season of my life and is when I discovered Shameless. This show didn’t teach me a lot, but I felt validated in my feelings by watching Fiona. I saw myself in her, and while that might be a red flag, her psychotic breaks made me feel a little bit less insane for how I was handling my life.
Whether or not you’ve already seen these shows, there was something iconic about the time period they came from. Different people say it’s because life was simpler before the complexities of social media and before the political drama and “cancel culture”. Whatever it was, there is a vibrant, carefree energy in these shows that genuinely can be felt by people watching. From The Vampire Diaries to my current obsession with Pretty Little Liars, every person needs a dose of the early 2000’s dramas to get away from their own lives and get thrown into Hollywood.