My friend Lance has not left his apartment much in the last few weeks.
And you wouldn't either, if you had four sex- obsessed women always ready for you to turn them on.
Of course I am talking about the Sex and the City DVD sets, which he recently began watching incessantly after having never seen an episode on HBO.
In fact, Lance is not alone. Nobody goes out anymore. We're all chained to our televisions, watching things like Episode 487 of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the billionth season of The Simpsons (the Halloween episodes are the best!).
Lance doesn't care. "The women from the show have supplanted my need for real social interaction," he says. (Miranda and Samantha are his faves.)
Right on, Lance. I don't need three- dimensional people either, not when I have shirtless Jack Shepherd and the rest of the Lost crew.
It was a crazy time, those days I spent bingeing on Lost's first season. I would watch four or five episodes in a row, my pupils dilated to the size of dinner plates, while I methodically shoveled popcorn and ice cream into my face.
Then I would stumble into bed at 3 a.m. to dream of an urgent "medical treatment" from Matthew Fox. I call this period in my life "The Lost Weekend" (GET IT?).
More recently, I have been working my way through the first season of Friends. This is a show I did not bother to watch when it was doled out in once-per-week increments. But now that I can have ALL OF THEM AT ONCE for the low, low price of $19.99 per season, I am ecstatic to spend an entire evening with Ross Geller's monkey and Rachel Green's FABULOUS late-'90s haircut. (Do you think they'll ever get together? I hope so!)
But there is a dark side to gorging on DVDs.
When you have squandered all your time watching a series and your friends give up on you and your love life quietly atrophies, what do you do when ... you have watched all the discs?
Lance, who is halfway through the fourth season of Sex and the City , is pragmatic about the inevitable.
"Eventually the series will end, and I'll have to face reality," he says.
"Unless I find another TV series to watch."
Jessica is planning on watching the entire run of Seinfeld next. E-mail her in about six weeks at jburgess@quickDFW.com.
