An imagined television sketch, not a report of a particular episode.
“It’s been a while,” a woman says on a reality dating show.
The music stops. A producer cuts to sand dunes. Somewhere, an editor searches the archive for a camel. A perfectly ordinary description of someone’s private life has become a geographical crisis.
On the sofa, my roommate and I prepare to offer expert commentary. Our qualifications include having watched the previous episode and finding the remote without standing up.
“She should put herself out there,” one of us says, from underneath a blanket.
Television likes a measurable problem: six months, two years, an anniversary approaching at an alarming speed. A person’s actual feelings are less convenient. Perhaps she misses sex. Perhaps she misses a particular kind of relationship. Perhaps she is content and has been asked the same question four times until her answer sounds sufficiently dramatic.
The imaginary show prefers thirst. Thirst has a visual vocabulary. Contentment would require a much longer interview and fewer aerial shots.
Soon we are judging another contestant’s choices while negotiating whether walking to the kitchen is worth the effort. The contrast does not escape us, but it does not stop the commentary either.
A quiet sex life can be welcome, frustrating, or complicated. It is not automatically evidence of failure, and nobody owes a television audience a comeback season.
We finish the episode. My roommate gets water. I refrain from calling this a journey of rediscovery, although the production team would certainly have found a way.
