The title of this blog post lacks any form of inspiration. In fact, had I written it on any of my advertising degree work in an attempt to create a clever play on words it would likely have been torn off the wall, thrown to the floor and vomited on from all angles to such derisory cries of "Ash, we knew you were rubbish at art direction. We had hopes for your writing, but apparently we were mistaken." Fortunately I never had to do an ad campaign for a long running American drama series so my blushes were saved. Until now, that is, when I have chosen with my own free will to use it as a title for a short tempered moan about a show so happy it makes me feel utterly dejected about my own miserly existence on the face of the planet.
The problem I have with this weekly hour of unrealistically high amounts of joy is that no matter how ridiculous I know it is, and how bad it makes me feel about the worthlessly unexciting years I've spent living so far, I cannot help but watch it and lap it up.
Today, for example, someone had twins. She's been told just a few episodes earlier that she could never have kids which led to a failed attempt at adoption after in a prior season she had sort of adopted another girl but that didn't work out because of drugs (I think) before escaping a near death experience because apparently her fiancee or maybe her husband I'm not really sure which is magic and can breathe under water.
Twins.
Add to that they were born months prematurely because the woman in question is an idiot and yet they are now perfectly healthy and will likely go on to be millionaires because Tree Hill is the richest, most successful town in the history of the world.
It's a bit like that one friend we all have. You know, the one who is rubbish but does amazingly well in life through a streak of sheer luck and unbelievable audacity. The one who you meet a few years after you've finished school and you ask how they're doing and they tell you their shoes cost more than you earn in an entire year. That friend. That friend you want to punch. But now matter how hard I do want to punch this cheery bunch of untalented over achievers, I can't help but hold a special place for them in my heart. Whether this is because I have the sort of taste in television and film that often leads people to mistake me for someone of a homosexual persuasion, or whether it's simply because, like any drug, no matter how bad you know it is for you it has a hold over you any way I can't be sure.
Maybe it's brilliant direction.
Maybe the acting is so good it convinces me what is bad is actually good.
Maybe I'm just an idiot.
But whatever it is, I know, that by the time I am 25 I too want to be a happily married former basketball star with a small fortune and my own sports agency business who has cheated death around two and a half times and has the perfect line to say at any given time no matter how impossible the situation.
That is the dream. And if TV has taught me anything, it is that dreams will definitely come true. All the time. Without fail.
