When I went through my Buffy the Vampire Slayer phase, it hit hard and it hit fast. I was so hooked on the show that I’d unwrap each season as soon as I got it and stay up all night to watch the whole of it in one big marathon. I quit doing a lot of things just so I could watch Buffy. This went on for months. I watched them over and over again. I couldn’t get enough of it. A friend of mine from the States actually called me one evening to make sure I hadn’t died. She hadn’t seen me online for a long time and got worried.
It was bad.
And yet, it was good — the show, I mean. It had to be good, otherwise it wouldn’t have hooked me as solidly as it did. Phenomenal, really. The seasons cost half what they did when I bought them now – that’s the real kicker. I also felt compelled to buy Angel and I still think I wasted my money on it. I don’t like to contemplate how much money I spent on Joss Whedon. I’m just relieved I could afford it.
Do I have a point? No, I’m pretty curvy here.
Here’s the thing (Damn, ever since borrowing every season of Monk from the library I can’t stop saying that) — I’m infatuated now with Tom Welling. Michael Rosenbaum is a fine slice of being, too (I happened to love Zoe, Duncan, Jack & Jane). I really suspect I’m going to wind up buying all 8 seasons of Smallville now. I can just see it happening. History is going to repeat itself here.
With Buffy, I hadn’t heard much about the show – never got around to watching it until it was on DVD and done its 7th season. The first two seasons were at the library and I thought, what the heck, it’s free… Famous last words. By the middle of the first season I was starting to feel the allure of Whedon’s genius. By the end of season 2 (through which I cried many many tears), I was desperate to get a hold of the third season and devastated when I realized the library hadn’t bought it yet. So I had to.
Smallville is the same – never saw an ep until the show was bought by the library. Now here I’m nearing the end of season 2 and I catch myself getting overly excited about what’s going on in the show and I’m loving Lex and Clark and Chloe and I’m so eager to see what’s next for all of them. I know what Lex is going to become and it’s almost physically painful to think about. I love when characters can be built to such a scale that an audience can feel passionate about them and what they’re going through.
Which was something also interesting in that Buyology book I read recently — turns out seeing something happen to someone is exactly like having it happen to yourself. The brain literally can’t tell the difference between a real and a vicarious experience. It was discovered almost by accident – they had some apes of some kind wired up for brain testing. When one of the researchers came in with an ice cream cone and licked it, the brainwaves of the ape in the cage twitched as if it, too, got a taste. The ape imagined doing it and its brain registered the “act” as if it actually happened.
But anyway, back to my problem – can I justify spending $400 or more to satisfy my craving of this? No, not really. Can I afford it? Yes, actually, and I wouldn’t even feel a pinch in my pocketbook for the first time in several years.
Dilemmas dilemmas.
I can rationalize this by saying, well, it’s not like it’s crack, and I can use them again, which is something you can’t do with something injectable.
But, would I feel buyer’s guilt? Absolutely. When it comes to shopping, the real desire is in the hunt not the feast. It’s all about the endorphins, the rush. Then you come down from the shopper’s high, realize just how much got spent and crash.
But I still think I want them…
