Anyone who has spent more than seven minutes with me knows that I turn on the television for two reasons: soccer and romance in my crime and medical dramas. In this post I choose to focus on the latter.
Lately (and it should not have taken me this long to figure this out) it has come to my attention that the creators and writers of TV shows have all seemingly conspired to grind out my happiness beneath the toes of their grubby little sneakers. Every time two characters are brought together romantically, or almost brought together romantically, some unthinkable obstacle prevents the relationship from being anything close to resembling the fulfilling, love-affirming union I hunger for in my television shows. I give you the following five examples:
Olivia Benson & Elliot Stabler - Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
There is nothing I don't love about these two. I love them individually--as people and as actors--and I love them together--as partners at work and as partners in love. The only problem is that they never were partners in love. After 12 seasons of sexual tension so thick you could cut it with a towel (much of this may or may not have been invented by me), Christopher Meloni left the show and the relationship fizzled before it could even catch fire. I have boycotted the series ever since. Take that, Dick Wolf. I'm leading a groundswell. Sara Sidle & Gil Grissom - CSI
This romance storyline is actually nearly perfect. There was sexual tension (not just in my head) and Sara and Grissom did fall in love. It just so happens that this was revealed to viewers literally two minutes before the end of Sara's very last episode on the show. Fie!Lisa Cuddy & Gregory House - House
Oh yes, they went there. This particular scene happens to have been during one of House's Vicodin dreams and therefore not reality, but in reality boy did in fact meet girl, boy annoyed the shit out of girl, then girl realized that she couldn't help loving boy even though boy was addicted to prescription painkillers, denigrated his patients (sometimes with physical violence), and never said a kind word to a damn soul. I can't tell you how many times I've watched the scene where House and Cuddy finally become "Huddy." I also can't tell you the extent of my battered soul after Cuddy called off the relationship, House drove his car into the side of her house in a jealous rage, and Lisa Edelstein left the show.
Claire McLeod & Alex Ryan - McLeod's Daughters
(SPOILER ALERT, though I know a grand total of ZERO of you will watch this show.) This one is the most difficult for me to handle because of how unthinkable it is and how much I love Claire and Alex. I mean love. I love them so hard that no words convey the depth of my love beyond I love them. You know what I don't love? That five episodes after they admit their feelings and kiss, Claire dies when her car hits a rock (or a pothole - it was so traumatic for me that I've repressed the memory) and teeters on the edge of a canyon for several minutes before plunging to the rocks below. And, to make it worse, at Claire's wake a teary-eyed Alex sets an engagement ring on her coffin. That was the end of season three. The show went on for 8 seasons and Alex eventually married one of Claire's friends. I did not see this, though, because of the blinding cascade of tears I was so sick with heartbreak that I declared the series dead to me after the third season. If there's anything I learned from this devastation, it's that my capacity for waterworks when love is denied is scientifically astounding.
Dana Whitaker & Casey McCall - Sports Night
The very fact that it is impossible to find a decent-sized photo of just the two of them should tell you something about the ultimate disappointment of this confusing almost-relationship. (Casey's the one on the left, by the way.) Everything was glorious when they finally kissed after an entire season of agonizing denial-of-true-feelings on the part of both of them. Everything was not glorious when Dana came up with her batshit crazy "dating plan" wherein Casey would date other women for six months to gain experience before settling down with Dana. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that. And yet, when Dana realized she was a moron and finally asked Casey on a date, as proud as I was that he refused, the fact that they still weren't together at the end of the series got me thinking that maybe Aaron Sorkin is waging some sort of personal television vendetta against me. And I won't stand for it. (Though really I have no other choice.)In one episode of Sports Night, Dana and the rest of the studio are awaiting the results of the Pete Sampras/Alberto Fedrigotti match so they can go on air. Sampras was clearly the better player but Fedrigotti wasn't going down without a fight. "This guy won't die!" became the exclamation of the studio after every Sampras serve that Fedrigotti broke. Dana was eventually forced to push the show's airtime back to wait for the match to end and she approached the anchor desk to tell Casey. "Why is he doing this to me?" Casey asked, to which Dana responded, "He's not doing it to you personally, Casey, he's doing it to me personally." And ain't that the truth.
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