Dr. House, Target, and the End of the World

I have grown up watching investigatory shows like Law and Order, House, and 24. These programs have primed me for my own inquiries here at Columbia, such as: Why does my hallway smell like teriyaki sauce? Or, who left the empty can of Red Bull in the shower? While the first puzzle was easily attributed to spilled Chinese take-out, the origin of the conspicuously placed beverage remains a mystery.

It has occurred to me that I have not turned on the television more than once or twice since I moved into Sulzberger, but I still manage to follow the weekly adventures of Dr. Gregory House, the misanthropic star of the eponymous series, without even touching the remote. And it’s all thanks to the “View Full Episodes” section of fox.com.

I can also catch up on NBC’s The Office, which airs while I am usually at a real, live office (in the 112th and Broadway vicinity), via nbc.com, with few commercial interruptions. So why bother skipping out on work to catch it on TV if it only means enduring 10 more minutes of advertisements on a screen that’s not that much larger than my computer’s?

The point is I don’t need cable to watch television, anymore.

I can easily get my Jack Bauer fix by replaying old seasons on my DVD player, conveniently installed on my MacBook. And if I want to watch a show not offered in my standard cable package, for instance, Showtime’s Penn & Teller: Bullshit!—30 minutes of humorous myth debunking—it’s a mere $1.99 away, thanks to iTunes.

With the glorious “interwebulars,” also known as a “series of tubes” to all Ted Stevens fans, we can customize our own entertainment packages, watching what we want to watch, whenever we want to watch it, and it’s usually for free.

My Law and Order-bred intuitive skills have led me to conclude that this is awesome. I love that I can watch Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy whenever I’d like, which usually ends up being sometime past midnight. Although I no longer plop myself down in front of the big box—nor can I point to anyone in college who does so—I still hope that there are folks out there who do.

Why, you might ask? Because if we all stopped watching TV, skipped through the ads by viewing the shows online, or fast-forwarding with our TiVos, then the universe would self-destruct. Let me explain: television shows exist solely for the purpose of advertising. We’d like to think otherwise, but we can’t kid ourselves: Gossip Girls was not developed because of the artistic contribution it lends to the world. The show was created after producers saw the booming success of the paperback series.

If stores like Target realize that we are no longer bombarded with their “Hello Goodbuy” ads, which make any decent Beatles fan want to stab him or herself in the foot as a distraction from the butchering of a perfectly decent song, Target would stop wasting its money. If the money stopped a-flowin’, the shows would start a-dyin’.

This is the “end of the world” scenario that I alluded to earlier.

Not only would Jon Stewart be out of a job—and, let’s face it, our lives would all be a little sadder without his sarcastic jabs—but companies like Tide would cry themselves to sleep every night because the retail industry depends on advertising to turn a profit.

We have no one to blame but our own innovation. I could cite YouTube as the culprit for propagating the constant need for entertainment to be available online 24/7—but I won’t.

Is there anything we, as consumers, can do about the inevitable collapse of time and space without making a point of suffering through Herbal Essences commercials? Maybe by watching our shows online we’re sending a clear enough message to broadcasters that we’d like to change our viewing style.

How sad and ironic would it be if—after being pestered by Amnesty International representatives in the street every day—all we had to do to save the world was laugh at the Daily Show in real time and listen to a little boy whisper “Zoom! Zoom!” while a car drives by in the background.

The author is a Barnard College first year.