About a year ago, I told my friend Brian (one of the esteemed editors of this publication) that I was going to write an article for him. I proposed writing a piece about how TV shows and characters were better than real-life friends. I had thought of this idea last fall when I was really not too impressed with my friends and I must have been feeling an awful lot like they didn't care too much about me. Things got busy, however, and I didn't ever write the article. As the fall TV season approached this year, again this article idea was brought up. I agreed to write it, but I must say, my heart was not in it. A year has gone by. I guess I'm not as irritated with my friends, because as I would sit to write the article, I just kept thinking "Well, TV characters aren't really better than real friends". Then tonight I had a revelation and I decided although TV characters aren't always better than real friends, they certainly can be.

When I got home this evening, I spent an hour and a half haggling with different phone companies because of a crisis that came up with my bill. Anyway, I got off the phone with the problem not solved at all. I was very frustrated and angry. I tried calling four different friends in order to vent my frustrations. Three were not home. One was, but was busy talking to someone on the other line. As I hung up, it was the start of one my favorite TV shows of all time, Beverly Hills, 90210. I sat down on the couch and started to watch it. In a matter of minutes, I was involved with my TV "friends" in Beverly Hills, some of which I have known for the entire 9 years it has been on. I was excited for some of the characters and mad at others. As I was watching it, entranced with their stories, I decided TV "friends" can be better than real friends sometimes.

To begin with, TV shows are very reliable. They're on a schedule. You know when you can expect to see them. They are hardly ever not on their schedule, unless there's a national crisis or a big sporting event, and some of those times they're just pushed back a few hours. In all, TV friends don't really cancel on you. In the Chicago area, you can check in with your friends on Friends twice a day on most weekdays because of reruns--and then that makes three times on Thursdays because of the new episodes.

TV "friends" are always there for you. If you've had a bad day, they're great at distracting you. Scully and Mulder can take your mind of your car problems and talk to you about aliens. You can also choose your friends. A lot of people remember when they were younger and they wanted to be friends with a group of kids that didn't want to be friends with them. This doesn't happen between you and the TV world. You can be friends with anyone from the most popular to the least popular. I will probably never in my life be friends with a bunch of high schoolers like those on Dawson's Creek or with a whole law firm as on Ally McBeal. And I'm pretty positive I'll never know anyone like some of those folks on The Real World. There just aren't too many groups of people I know who get to live in Hawaii and have more crisises than anyone I know.

Perhaps most important, if you ditch these TV "friends", they don't mind. If you miss an episode of ER because you've got a big date, Carter could care less. He'll still return to entertain you the next Thursday, either by saving someone's life or by moving in on the new resident. Some people may argue that reruns make for bad friends, but that is not the case at all. With real-life friends, people are always telling stories about what happened before and often relive the past; reruns are just the way TV friends do this. Even better, if it was a story you didn't like, you don't need to smile and sit through it all like you might with your own friends. Instead, you have the option of just turning it off.

Also, if you get mad at your TV friends or at something they do, you can again turn off the TV and walk away. They won't hold a grudge. They'll still be on the next week. If you're mad that Dawson cheated on Joey (Pacey would never cheat on anyone), you can just turn off the TV and leave. When you tune in next week, Dawson won't care that you ever left. He'll be too busy writing another movie or bemoaning his sad life. This leads to yet another reason that TV friends can be better than real-life friends. You have no real responsibility to them. You don't need to call them to see how they're doing or even call them or buy them a gift on their birthdays. If they break up with their significant others, you don't have to spend more time with them while they recover. They do their thing and you do yours and when you want a friend, there they are.

In all, I'm not trying to say that TV characters are better to have than real friends, because I think we all know that they aren't. Just the same, however, they're good to have around. On occasion, they may be better than your friends. There's nothing wrong with people who watch a few TV series religiously. They're not antisocial; they only have yet another group of friends with which to hang around. The new season and series premieres give us the opportunity to meet a new group of people. So peruse the fall season preview here in PCC and look for who you want to meet and get to know better. Who knows, you may find some good friends that you'll keep for a long time.