When watching a TV show, I like to start from the very beginning: Season 1 Episode 1. I don’t like to jump in mid-season, I don’t like to miss episodes, and I don’t like miss any lines of dialogue from chatter in the room. I’m a bit of a snob this way, but I feel that’s the way TV should be enjoyed. This doesn’t mean that every show I watch every show right from the first episode. Many shows I watch casually until I am quickly bored, but only the elite do I watch in their entirety right from the start. A very few select sitcoms have won me over in this regard (Seinfeld, Scrubs, The Office, 30 Rock), and much to my delight a Canadian show found a special place on my DVD rack: Being Erica.
It’s true that the main character, Erica Strange, does not relate to me. I am not female, nor Jewish; I am not desperate for love or struggling with work. Nonetheless, the show with all its quirks (Erica sees a therapist who helps her time-travel to have a 2nd chance to redo regrets from her past), dialogue featuring many famous quotes from writers, and local Toronto references has made it feel like the show really belongs to this city where I live. My partner’s affinity for the show should also be mentioned – she booked off work one day to go be an extra for the show. Upon her return, we decided that we have to start the show from Season 1, so we went out and bought the DVD to watch together. And that’s where everything went wrong.
The problem with watching a show as a team is that one must accommodate the schedule of the other. I can’t watch an episode on my own when she is scheduled to meet up with friends, nor can she watch ahead while I am away for one of my many sporting events. It is our show – to watch together.
Disc One went smoothly – an episode a day for 5 consecutive days – but when we put in the DVD for Season 1 Disc 2, it all fell apart. Imagine our frustration when the disc, despite what the box art and sticker led us to believe, was in fact of Season 2 Disc 2. All of a sudden we were thrown into Erica’s world with new characters, new story arcs hadn’t known of to go along with an unsatisfying lack of knowledge of how past arcs ended. I shut off the TV right away; we had to go exchange the DVD. My partner, however, wanted simply to watch Being Erica no matter where the story was. I refused to go along with it, and refused to let her know of future episodes as we should experience them together.
The next day, we went to exchange the DVD together, but insisted that they try out Disc Two in the store before we took it home. Same problem! Season 1 Disc 2 is actually from Season 2. It must be a major manufacturer’s defect. Instead of a refund, we opted to get the DVD of Season 2 to go along with our future purchase of Season 1. Up comes my next problem – she wants to watch season 2 without seeing how season 1 ended. I want to refuse, but she can only hold out so long from not watching.
It’s dangerous to have different TV habits from a partner who has the same fixation on a particular show. One can never be sure to be home at every moment the other wants to watch, but one often times cannot hold out from finding out what happens next. What is one to do?
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