I’m watching Scrubs S1 on DVD (I’ve never watched it when it was on, decided to try it after rediscovering my love of doctor shows with Grey’s Anatomy), and I just finished episode 1×14, and it’s a perfect example of what I was trying to get across an earlier post on TV and movies. The moment when Elliott kissed J.D. created such joy in me, such fulfillment, and you almost never get that with movies. Very rarely you get it in a Garden State-type movie. But it’s because with TV, you know the characters, you’ve known them for hours and weeks and months. You’ve wanted Elliott and J.D. to connect, you wanted it back when they almost did six or seven episodes back, and when they didn’t, it was crushing. Then when they do, it’s a fulfillment not of two hours, but of weeks. You’ve seen them try to connect with other people, and come close, but not quite. You’ve seen how they drive each other crazy and how they keep just missing each other.
You see it in How I Met Your Mother between Robin and Ted (which is really infuriating at times, because COME ON! They’re both so great). You see it in Angel, when you wanted to kill Wesley for messing around with Lilah when Fred was RIGHT THERE. Casey and Dana on Sports Night. Luke and Lorelei on Gilmore Girls (I haven’t actually seen that far in GG yet, but I heard a little about it, no matter how hard I tried to stay away from spoilers). OMG, Logan and Veronica on Veronica Mars, which is the example that ought to have jumped to my mind right off, because I totally hyperventilated when I first saw that episode. John and Aeryn on Farscape, which was almost as wow as Logan and Veronica. And of course The X-Files, when you had to wait for like SIX YEARS before there was anything between Mulder and Scully at all. (And there’s the downside, too…after all that waiting, when Mulder and Scully did get together, it was anticlimactic and ruined their chemistry. But the baseball episode? Perfecto.)
Most of these television relationships may not last, but the moment they start? Heaven.
edit – Yep, next episode, Elliott and J.D. already broken up. But it was a dang good episode. And illustrates my favorite thing about recent television…comedy series can have episodes which aren’t funny at all, and are yet still perfect. The lines between genres are blurring so much lately, and I *love* it.