Occasionally, some switch in my head goes off and I can’t stop watching television. I could ride a bike. I could get some work done. I could, theoretically, do my laundry or pull the weeds from the garden. There are any number of things I could be doing instead of watching five hours of House a day, but none of them are quite as satisfying as allowing my brain to degenerate into a state pliable enough that I diagnose myself with encephalitis caused by toxoplasmosis, then Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, before finally accepting that all that is actually wrong with me is that I’m housing a parasitic Ascaris worm.
At the very least, my excuses for taking sick days will probably become more interesting in the upcoming months.
Plenty of people are quick to villainize TV as a soul-sucking black hole that makes you stupid, but this is a dramatic oversimplification. These are the same people that believe that aspartame causes cancer despite the fact that no legitimate medical evidence exists to support this theory. The fact of the matter is that television is an intricate window into society. More than that, it’s a great way to take a mental vacation for as long as you might need to.
Still, it’s not really normal behavior for me. I watch TV, but not usually in huge blocks. One might diagnose this as a self-preservative need for a temporary form of escapism. That would certainly be a fair conclusion, something that Dr. Foreman or even Cuddy might agree with. But not House. No, not a chance. Because House knows there’s something bigger going on. House will call you on your bullshit between mouthfulls of Vicodin. This is because House knows (somehow) that you have nothing worthwhile to escape from. Everything is going well. The weather is outstanding. Work is fine. The students are fine. Why not enjoy the beach for a few hours?
Because I’m only on Season 2, that’s why.