Showing up late to ‘Office’ sure way to tick off TV buddy
By Beth Teitell
Thursday, November 3, 2005

I didn’t want to see her. She’d be annoyed, or, worse, disappointed, and what could I say? Sometimes “I’m sorry” just doesn’t cut it. The truth? I considered calling in sick, but I had a column to write. I knew she’d be at her desk when I got to work, and sure enough, she was waiting for me. Me, the one who had betrayed her.

I’m her TV buddy for “The Office,” and she was primed for a delicious discussion of the previous evening’s episode. Except that I hadn’t seen it.

“Did you watch?” she asked.

Panicked, I considered lying. A master of faking my way through life, handling a five-minute conversation on a show I hadn’t seen would be no problem. I’d just toss out a lot of “Could you believe that?” and “That was so typical of him.”

But I must have hesitated too long. “You didn’t watch,” she said. J’accuse.

“My TiVo remote is broken,” I began (this is true), “and all my shows are locked in my TV. I couldn’t watch.”

“It’s on at 9:30,” she said. “Your kids are in bed. You could have watched it live.”

Coulda Woulda Shoulda.

I want out of this relationship, I thought. It’s like a play date that lasts for 13 weeks, not counting re-runs.

I called a friend, expecting her to take my side, but she didn’t. “You entered a social contract,” she told me, “and fidelity is crucial. Because by watching faithfully together (at separate homes), and then skipping a week, or two, you are, in effect, standing her up. It’s the equivalent of having a standing dinner engagement and leaving the other person to sit alone in the restaurant nibbling on bread sticks for two hours, because ‘something else came up’ and you couldn’t show.”

I think she could tell how bad I felt, because she confessed a transgression of her own. “I watched ‘Charmed’ when it first came on, religiously. I roped (a friend) into watching ‘Charmed.’ We had endless philosophical debates over Cole’s soul, and whether he could really be saved, or, because he was mostly demon, if it was inevitable that he be sucked into the Dark Side, what with being the Lord of the Underworld that one time and all. And then, I stopped watching, leaving her frustrated, and with no one to dish to every week. And now, I caught it again the other night, only I have no idea who this character is, and I can’t possibly ask her. She won’t take me back.”

Where does that leave us, two unfaithful louts? Is it possible we could find happiness with each other?

“Hey,” I said. “What are you doing Sunday? Want to watch ‘Desperate Housewives?’ ”