confessions of a certified series addict

SERIES ADDICTION. it all started, when my best friend, joy, and i decided to watch an american t.v. series. it was when we still both have cable subscriptions. (she have her own place already but too bad for joy, her landlady won’t allow it. i wonder why?). it was not for long before we got hooked and got addicted with that tv series. ever since we had our television set ‘cabled’ (is that a word? hehe!) i stopped tuning the remote to the local networks. no kapuso nor kapamilya, no local news, no nothing. i felt brainwashed by what cable tv offers. my mind was colonized by the americans (hehe). it got worse when joy and i got tired of waiting for a week for the next episode of the series to be aired, and decided to buy and watch it from a pirated dvd (alright, you can boo me. i’m a criminal. hehe!)—complete from season 1 to 3. no annoying commercials of shampoo, whitening soaps, foot powders, feminine wash, condoms, female napkins...that take 5 minutes or more! but i tell you: watching tv series continuously without commercials, with no time to rest or breathe between episodes, no time to recover from the nail-biting end of the previous episode – i realized how i miss the commercials. good for joy, she’s now enjoying lots of it on her ‘uncabled’ tv set! (har! har!).

anyway, i was a junior student in a medical university when i got hooked. after finishing the addictive tv series with my bestfriend, we had a long time to wait before the next season comes out. three months. that’s why we shifted our attention to other tv series out there! and we got hooked on each and every one of them. dvd marathon on the next level! we watched one after the other…or sometimes two or three at the same time (joy usually does this. i’d rather finish one than start with another. no wonder she’s ‘blind’ already). there came a point when i got so addicted that i barely sleep and watching dvd is the only thing i do everyday, besides, eating, sleeping, breathing, and taking a bath (i brush my teeth too..sometimes..haha! joking!). during those days, i really sleep late. 5 in the morning (that’s really early) and wake up in 1 or 2 in the afternoon. the scorching sun on my bedroom window usually wakes me up, then, i eat, and watch again, then sleep. i was a sloth. one reason why i gained a lot of weight in college. i mean…a lot! wait till you see my high school pictures (hehe!). i am not really a morning person but i had to overcome this to prevent tardiness from messing up my hospital affiliations. i was an owl. i used to go out in the middle of the night to buy extra large ‘burger machine burgers’ (they changed the name to ‘buy one plus one burgers’ to match minute burger’s ‘buy one, take one’ promo. i don’t blame them. the latter is selling burgers like pancakes), complete with cheese and coleslaw and sometimes with sunny-side-up egg. and to match the salty burgers, there has to be a large mug of creamed coffee. all these infront of my fave tv series---hays…like bree van de kamp…just perfect!

moving on, these are ones i have already watched. there is desperate housewives (the secrets of wisteria lane intrigued me, especially the obsessive-compulsive bree van de kamp), 24 (joy didn’t like to watch this one while steph and her family go gaga with it. i love the concept that a whole season happened in just a day), grey’s anatomy (this inspired me to be a surgeon…but reality hurts..hehe! i love sandra oh’s character), house, md (like grey’s anatomy, it stimulated my mind being a medical practitioner. i just love hugh laurie’s acting. he won an emmy for best actor) the o.c. (no comment. i’m just glad marissa died. haha), alias (this is the first series i finished. too bad it didn’t go as far as five seasons. this made me love jennifer garner!), prison break (this one’s recent. one of my favorites but sadly didn’t make my top 3. my bestfriend is head-over-heels with wentworth miller. dream on! haha! her ex love this too. peace tayo, hales!)

it was really strange when no one in school seemed to know what i was talking about when telling them (with full of energy and sound effects) about these tv series. perhaps they had no cable or dvd player i thought (haha! joke!). joy and i shared the same sentiment and we had this very proud feeling that we were the pioneers of american tv series at school. because of constant ramblings about this addiction of ours, our friends started to buy the dvd’s as well…and it spread through out the campus…(haha!)

enough blabbering. here are the ones that topped my charts:

TOP THREE.
CHUCK. who would want to miss sarah’s pretty face and her ass-kicking moves, charles ‘chuck’ bartowsky’s geeky humor, morgan’s fixated character, casey’s growls, the power mongering tang aka lord sauron, and the funny antics of the nerd herd at buy more? (haha!). anyway, i don’t want to give anything more away in case you’re interested in watching this one. i, myself hate spoilers, although i’m a big, walking spoiler! (joy didn’t fail to let me now). well, it’s quite obvious why i like this one. it’s a comedy-action series. every episode never failed to make me laugh my heart out! (haha!) anyone needs to laugh or smile once in a while in this miserable world, right? i just love the geeky humor of it…snap!


TOP TWO
LOST. who would have thought this one has been hailed the ‘worst tv series’ ever, says one magazine ( i forgot the name), but shame on them because of all the tv series i mentioned so far, this one and house, md, are the only ones who got a decent primetime emmy nomination this year--best drama series. (haha!). but well, i can’t blame them for saying so. the first two seasons formed a lot of questions that were not answered. i too, got frustrated, but it seemed to me that the more i got frustrated, the more curious i got, then, the more i got interested and the more i craved for answers. that i think made it more worth watching. i love mysteries, and i enjoy formulating hypotheses and pondering probabilities of what would happen next, of the reason for a certain phenomena, of what happened between gaps of a timeline. each episode were divided in two parts, the present and a flashback (usually the life of a featured character before the ‘incident’) but in latest season the writers took a daring move. instead of flashbacks, they changed them into flash forwards, which i think formulated more questions! (it broke the timeline and you have to fill the gaps, of course).

imagine yourself on plane that crashed on a seemingly deserted tropical island, with polar bears (aren’t they supposed to be in the south pole? fyi: no polar bears in the north pole), old underground research labs, ‘monsters’, and there’s no way of being rescued. no way out of the island. because one can find the island. you’re lost. you’re stuck with all the mysteries and the looming hostilities. the island is so mysterious i almost wish it is real. anyway, summarizing everything, i love this one because, i think, it’s the most mentally and intellectually-stimulating watch of all.


TOP ONE.
ONE TREE HILL. surprise! surprise! (if you fail to notice a tree and the logo on my header, lucas scott’s quote on my top sidebar, and the song on my music box. hehe). this is the first tv series i first got addicted to with my bestfriend (yep! the one i told you earlier). this is mainly about a circle of friends attending high school, in tree hill, north carolina. each and one of the characters have different personalities, hence, they have different stories to tell, different perspective on life, love, everything. one thing i love about one tree hill is how the characters are well rounded. the characters are so dynamic and you can bear witness on how they progress or deteriorate as the story goes. i have a personal connection with this tv series. i could relate to what the characters are going through—their fears, their aspirations, triumphs, hesitation, confusion, happiness, sadness…and every episode never failed to inspire me. every story teaches a lesson to learn…every lesson becomes a challenge…and the challenge is how to apply these lessons to my everyday life…lessons about life, love, and everything that a person goes through in a lifetime. of all the characters, i could relate with lucas scott…he’s one confused guy. lost. afraid. he doesn’t know the person he wanted to be. he asks a lot of questions and learns the answers the hard way. but i know he’ll find his way in the end. the immensity of his love scares him, so as the people that tries to love him back.

this series also teach how friendship and family are very important in molding one’s personality. well, this premise is so clichéd already, but people are very forgetful most of the time—looking for things they already have on their pockets, aiming for something that they thought could make them happy but not. people need to remember. people need to be reminded. not necessarily the hard way. it could just be a pirated dvd away…

that’s my top 3 tv series…please…let me know yours. ciao!