Ease your furrowed brows and take a breath, I don't mean I have an obsession with being a parent. In fact, I don't even have kids yet! I do, however, have a bit of an obsession with the television series "Parenthood." Let me take you back about four months ago to a moment in marital history almost every couple experiences.
It was a cold December evening. Nathan and I had been married for about a month, and just a couple weeks before we had made our first ever Black Friday purchase: an LG TV and a Blue-Ray player. After hours of wandering Best Buy searching for the best TV for our viewing pleasure, and several more hours on debating between purchasing a Wii-U or a Blue-Ray, we were now ready to enter the world of entertainment by remote control (and remembering to keep that one inconvenient light switch on).
In college, I was introduced to the now well-known phenomenon of "binge-watching" on Netflix. Shows like the Office, Chuck, and Friends were instant successes in my heart along with Downton Abbey through BBC.com. Nathan wasn't a big tv show kind of guy though. If something was on tv, he would watch it, but he didn't really have any devotion to a particular show. Until now.
Nathan was sitting on the couch, relieved to finally get our Wifi working, when he starting scrolling through Netflix and said, "What show do we want to get hooked on?" I was completely surprised to hear him say something like that, so I laughed. That's when I realized he was serious! He never intended for us to become addicted to watching shows on Netflix, it was more of a "let's do something together married people do." Oh, how a good thing can go bad...
To be honest, we aren't addicted, but there definitely is a bad habit of binge-watching every now and then. I have Parenthood to blame. The first series that showed up on the recommended list was Parenthood. It looked interesting. I was a little hesitant though that it would inspire us to have kids sooner than we had planned, or frighten us into never wanting kids ever, but I decided to give the show a shot. It took two episodes and then I was hooked.
This past week, we entered into the fourth season of the six-season series. Over the course of four months I have laughed, I have cried, I have thrown a lolipop stick at the tv, I got into an argument over one episode, and I have gotten so excited that I have fallen off the couch. I have even gone so far into looking up how many episodes certain actors were in to avoiding "cheating" and looking ahead for details to cliffhangers. At the end of each episode I usually have a new favorite character and a new least favorite character. In summary, I am crazy when it comes to this show.
But in reality, Parenthood is one of the best shows I've ever watched. It touches on possibly every topic you can think of, and Nathan and I find ourselves pausing the show every so often just to discuss our own take on the current situations. We've learned a lot about each other just through conversations like, "How would you have handled that?" or "What if we have a kid that does that?" Although it is a very secular show, with only slight mentions of religious issues, we like to take that as an opportunity to comprehend how our Christian background might change the same situations in the show if they were to happen in our own lives.
While we get into the drama and the excitement of the show (that's where my crazy obsession comes in), the best part about it is being able to bond with my husband and learn something new every episode. So go watch Parenthood if you haven't already! If you have, then binge-watch something with your husband or boyfriend, you might learn something new!