Can I love television without being obsessed?

I just wrote out a laborious post about watching "As Time Goes By" this weekend (British TV series with Judi Dench about a middle-age couple falling in love) and being somewhat ashamed about it. After further reflection, I realized I wasn't ashamed at all, and I truly love that show, and I can't wait until next weekend when I have some time to finish watching all of it. So there. Thanks Mom, for introducing me to the greatness that is British humour. Yes, I spelled that with a 'u'. Yes, I've been thinking in "British-speak" to myself for the past two days. And yes, schemes have crossed my mind as to how I could move to London and develop an English accent, even though I've lived in America for the first 20 years of my life.

This leads to another thought I've had recently. I don't feel like I watch that much TV. I watch "30 Rock" regularly, but that's about it. I've been watching earlier seasons of "Scrubs", but have kind of fallen off that bandwagon. And now I've watched 7.5 of 9 seasons of "As Time Goes By" this weekend, but that's about it. Not to say I don't just veg out sometimes, watch a lot of HGTV and "Mythbusters", occasional sporting events, but I always categorized "heavy" TV watchers as someone with two or more shows that they would die before missing on Thursday night, or whenever. Oh, can't forget that my guilty pleasure is Rob Dyrdek's "Fantasy Factory" but it's not in season right now. Again though, in my defense, I watch those online a few days later, it doesn't really dictate my life.

Despite all of that, in everyday conversation, I bring up TV often enough to make me look like a couch potato. Perhaps I just relate things in life to abstract sources really well? Perhaps I like the shows I do because they relate so much to real life? (I really don't believe that one...) I personally think it's because I only tolerate TV I find funny or genuinely interesting (so I'm not sure why I watch HGTV...subconsciously want to be a designer? I'm not sure) and you can always inject funny or interesting comments into conversation. Or so I thought. The more it happens, the more I realize how silly it makes me sound. It's like talking about Facebook in real life, something that has become fairly common place, but I still try to hide it by saying "Someone emailed me" instead of "Someone wrote on my wall/sent me a message". Perhaps it's not as taboo as I think it is, but it's always true that it's never as funny during the second retelling. "Mythbusters" came in handy in my physics class actually, we were discussing pressure so after class I emailed my teacher a link to the episode where a scuba diver's air line gets cut and his whole body is compounded into his helmet because of the water pressure. Great stuff.

All in all, I'm not really sure. I've been making a conscience effort to not talk about TV too much, and an even harder effort to not let it become any sort of importance in my life, but what can I say? I've always been a big fan of music playing in the background, hilarious set-ups, and wrapping up problems in 22 minutes.