I’m the sort of person who doesn’t watch a lot of TV – I’m more into reading, and by “reading” I mean watching a bunch of TikToks in a row. However, when I do find a show that I like, I go all out: binge-watching every episode in less than a week and dealing with the aching emptiness I’m left with later. It’s my very own personal, special treat.
Just last week, I experienced one of these rare surges of interest when I spontaneously put on episode one of Love Island Season 5. Before I knew what had happened, I was seven episodes deep and had a vested interest in which couple would get to spend the night in The Hideaway. My thrilling hours-long binge came to a grinding halt, however, when my boyfriend plopped down on the couch during episode eight, got immediately invested, declared it “our show,” and then promptly left to go to the gym.
Umm, okay, what the hell am I supposed to do now?
He didn’t even see the whole episode! He just waltzed into the room five minutes in and now he has the gall to say things like, “Same time again next week?”
Next week? To watch the next episode? I was planning to have watched all 58 episodes and the messy reunion tell-all by then! Not to mention complete a thorough deep-dive on all of the contestants’ social media.
But now? Now I’m forced to wait until my boyfriend is ready to watch another episode before I can re-immerse myself in that ethically-questionable world. I can already feel the names and relevant plot points starting to slip from my memory.
I knew sharing my interests with him would come back to bite me in the end.
I even tried watching the show while he was at the gym to see if he really was invested, but he got upset, said I had “broken his trust” and that I “clearly didn’t cherish spending quality time with him.”
In the end, he looked super sad, so I gave in and re-watched those two episodes over the course of two weeks with him, because, apparently, “quality time” doesn’t entail watching 14 hour-long episodes in a row.
At this rate, we’ll never get to Casa Amor.
But ultimately, it doesn’t matter because I’ve found my own new show: Mad Men! I’m already on episode three and, by binge-watching it in the dead of night while my boyfriend is fast asleep, I should finish it by next week – oh, God, he’s waking up…he’s awake…he’s asking who Don Draper is…Fuck.
