Insert Obligatory Brokeback Mountain Reference Here

[spectralbovine]

Last night, while washing dishes, I came to the following conclusion:

Come this fall, I really have to quit Prison Break and Smallville.

The reasons for this are numerous:

1. They are the two worst shows I continue to watch. Why am I wasting hours of my life watching shows that aren't even that good? What am I really getting out of them? I've watched the first four episodes of Deadwood, and they're probably better than all of Smallville. Right?
2. No one else is watching them anyway! I have embraced television as a social medium, but Prison Break and Smallville don't bring me closer to anyone since no one talks about them. Not specifically and not generally: they're not a big enough part of the cultural zeitgeist to matter.
3. I don't really CARE what happens to these people anymore! I mean, I kind of do, but that's what recaplets are for. Smallville as filtered through Omar is better anyway.
4. Prison Break is a problem because my Mondays are getting more and more crowded, and, after seeing an ad in Entertainment Weekly that showed me that Cobie Smulders is stupid hot, I have the urge to finally get into How I Met Your Mother.
5. Smallville is a problem because my Thursdays are also crowded, even moreso with the Lost move.
6. There are already a handful of new shows from writers I like (Cupid, Dollhouse, Fringe, Mythological X, The Middleman) that I'm going to want to try out, and new is fun! Everyone likes new shows!

But I'm not good at this, you guys! I've been watching these shows for years, and I'm such an anal completist that it will niggle at me that I'm missing the rest of the story. That it's out there and I'm not getting it. I mean, it's for that reason that I at least have to watch Smallville until the end of the season just to give it a nice close-out point (except they'll probably have some awesome cliffhanger that will reel me back in). I managed to skip most of the last season of The X-Files back in the day, but I've become far more obsessive about my television-viewing habits since then. I don't know how to let go of TV shows! They're long stories! You can't just put a book down in the middle and never come back to it! How do you people do it? I need a support group.

I was able to quit Jericho and Studio 60, but those were new shows I didn't really have an investment in. Normally, I stick with shows to a fault. It's who I am.

But yesterday, I ordered a Threadless T-shirt L instead of XL! And I'm eating fish and seafood! I don't know what I'm changing into! (A MACHIIIIIIINE?!)