Television is an incredible medium. I really mean this. True, it can be used for destructive ends, such as the endless advertisement, the conformity its sometimes demands and the brainrot that results from overexposure, but within all that there is an infinite storytelling potential. Don’t get me wrong, books have their place and will never be replaced and I would take a desert island full of books over a desert island with a television set anyday, but the point I’m trying to get at is my original sentence. Television is an incredible medium.

Actually, now that I think of it storytelling itself is the root of this statement. That is, there have been characters in books, TV shows, movies, etc. that have been especially memorable to me. There have been times when reading a book that I have been sad for a couple of days after a character I was especially attached to died or had something bad happen to. To put it more clearly, I empathize and feel connected to certain fictional characters. To me, that is pretty cool.

But I digress. The reason I wanted to write this little entry was to point out why television characters, or any character played by an actor is a double-edged sword. While TV provides more visual stimulus than a book, there exists the pitfall that you start to think (if the actor is good enough) that they are indeed the character they are representing. In this case, you almost get the urge to want to meet this person, to talk to the character that you know so well. But clearly, these actors are not their characters. Moreover, a fair amount of actors can be the complete opposite of the people they represent on TV. For instance, one actor whose character is really deep and interesting on TV turns out to be a superficial, boring snob in real life. It’s kind of a letdown inherent in visual medium.

Either way, I am impressed with this storytelling our race has developed. Even before the time of books and TV people loved to pass on stories to each other. How can we, beings potentially formed by millions of years of evolution from primordial ooze, have evolved to a point where we have such awesome accomplishments? Sometimes I just have to sit back in try to comprehend the mere thought of our existence and what it means. The human race is truly a mystery to me.