TV is the best.

My brother Toby and I don’t talk a lot. He is one of my greatest friends and I love him so much that it makes my eyes water, but we’re just not great at communicating. It doesn’t help that we’re separated by two time zones, he has four children and works an 80 hour week. One would think that those few phone calls each year would consist mostly of talk about our children, careers, weather, hopes and dreams, but what we spend ninety percent of every conversation talking about is, for us, much more bonding: television.

“Yeah, Leah [his wife] thinks I watch too much TV,” Toby once said to me, “but TV is awesome.” I loved how unapologetic he was about loving television. He continued telling me about how there are some great shows on TV right now: “Have you seen…? What about…? I know, such a great show.” My goodness, the laughs we’ve shared about the Bluth family’s chicken dances, Ron Swanson’s Hierarchy of Needs, and the “talking like ‘this’ contest” that never happened between Jack Donaghy and Devon Banks.

Admitting that you watch any TV at all invites some judgment. It seems to be a universal belief that reading is the supreme source of intelligence and television serves no purpose except to "rot" the brain. But I have to agree with Toby on this one. TV is awesome and my brain feels (mostly) fine. I also love to read and have recently rekindled my interest for fiction (previously, the only books on my shelf were about nutrition and babies – it was time for a break), but reading requires two hands, two eyes and complete, consuming attention. I am an attention defecited (not a word, whatever) mother of an eight-month-old baby. And, come on, TV is just so entertaining.

My weekly morning routine starts by waking to my sweet baby’s cries and feeding him and myself to the comedic voices of Conan O’Brien, Seth Meyers and later (when Tyler comes home), Jimmy Fallon. On weekends, we enjoy one or more of several comedies: New Girl, The Mindy Project, Saturday Night Live or, my favorite, Modern Family. I attempted drama in the form of Mad Men, and while the 1960s was certainly the most visually appealing decade, as usual, the absence of a punchline started freaking me out.

Conan O’Brien and his friend Andy Richter once had this conversation:

C: “TV is the best.”

A: “It sure is.”

C: “Better than books!”

 I don’t completely disagree. I love television and I’m not going to be ashamed of it anymore.