The Buffy Test

I read a blog post the other day at Dating After 40 about using your favorite TV shows as a dating scale. It got me to thinking. Not about dating cause, since I'm already married, I'm fairly certain that my husband wouldn't look kindly on my deciding to date other men.

Since we've just entered the Fall TV season, it made me think about how I determine which shows to watch each year.  My husband has always thought I watched too many shows and, I'll admit, in the past I've watched 20+ hours a week, which may seem a bit excessive, depending on how you look at it.  But keep in mind that I wrote two different entertainment blogs at the time and you can understand the need to watch that much TV in a week. And honestly, it's less than 3 hours a night anyway.  Just because he never watches anything or reads anything or has any other interesting hobbies, is that my fault?

So, um, where was I? Right, how to decide what to watch this year. Normally, I have this system whereby I watch every single show I want to, as long as I'm able to DVR it and can find time to watch it at some point before the DVR (fine, two DVRs) was full.  That basically meant that I could record up to four shows at the same time and, if I really needed to, watch another one on a different TV.  I could even, if absolutely necessary, watch a show or two online at some point, too.

Even worse, once I started to watch a show I felt like I had to finish out the season and, often, once I finished one season I felt the need to keep watching. As though I owed the show something. Last year, I implemented a new policy. The "three strikes and you're out" policy.  If I didn't absolutely love a show after the third ep, I was done. It was better and it cut way down on my TV watching, at least by the end of the season. 

This year, I was even more ruthless. I decided to only watch the bare minimum of shows I really, really want to watch. But even then, I've been starting to think that I may have chosen too many.  So then I read that blog post. I've been thinking, maybe I should use a similar litmus test for what shows I'm going to watch.

The show I'd use as my standard would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is, as anyone who knows me already knows, my very, very most absolute favorite show of all time. Ever. I couldn't miss an ep when it aired and I watched every single ep at least three times in the first week.  I've seen each and every one of the 144 eps (also the original pilot ep) at least 25 times. At least.

So, now, I'm comparing every show on my list with Buffy. If I'd rather watch a repeat of an ep of Buffy that I've already seen 25+ times, then the show is totally off the list.

Probably.