Days since TV Ban: 3

Television watched: 0 hrs

Confidence that I can do this: 41% (Which is equal to the amount of people in the USA who talk to the person they’re with at dinnertime over watching television.)

Dinnertime is the antithesis of my work day. Instead of sitting upright in an ergonomic desk chair typing expediently, I curl into a ball on the couch under a pile of blankets with my fiancee and zone out to whatever episode pops up on my queue. Avoiding chores. Ignoring tasks. Actively blocking out any intrusive inklings of responsibility for that precious hour, or — if it’s a particular binge-worthy season — three.

The perfect dinnertime show does not inspire too much thought, or bring up disturbing societal issues in a meaningful way. It’s Emily-in-Paris-level cringe but good. It inspires catty commentary and deliciously judgy eye rolls. It may be Severence-level topical, but without award-winning depth. Everyone has their own go-to shows. I’ve watched Gossip Girl and Downton Abbey all the way through three times. Watching them is like pulling on a worn sweatshirt with holes on the sleeves that I’m not ready to part with.

I knew going in to this that I would come up against wicked cravings, and some unpleasant truths. Tonight I experienced both.

In the 1950s, when TV dinners were a novelty, and selling at rates of 10 million trays a year, one prescient columnist cried, “Eating off a tray in the dusk before a TV set is an abomination!”, which probably made him pretty unpopular with a large segment of the American population. And still would. According to a 2025 survey, 63% percent of Americans watch TV with dinner.

I don’t know when I first started watching TV with dinner. I don’t even think it was when I was living in the USA; it may have been when I was living with my first boyfriend after college in Australia. It may have been because Game of Thrones was on around that time, or because my boyfriend was a gamer and media-obsessed intellectual property lawyer and a member of a competitive trivia team on the topic of pop culture at the local pub. I don’t remember. But tonight, I sat with my American fiancee at the dining table (in chairs!) and ate dinner without TV. And I realized I have also forgotten how to have a conversation.

I felt lost. It felt quiet and strange at the dining table in hard, uncomfortable chairs (Note to self: I may need to get new chairs). We asked each other about our days. Not much had happened at work for either of us. That took a couple minutes. Ironically, the most animated part of our conversation was when we talked about television, and animately quoted Bo Bernham’s COVID special and send-up of a white woman’s Instagram.

I suppose that was how the Greeks did it. In the days when television was an epic poem recited by a talented orator with an eidetic (or something close to it!) memory, who could recite a thousand pages worth of narrative verse for his listeners, that was what entertained people – reciting stories. And I suppose, that is what TV is – humans telling stories with strategically-placed cliffhangers for ultimate bingeworthiness.

So, is my giving up TV like asking to take a step backward in human cultural evolution? Am I just out of practice at dinnertime conversation? Or do I just not have much to say? Or — do my fiancee and I just not have that much to say to each other?

More to be revealed in the next episode…