Breaking sad: why we mourn the loss of our TV friends in the same way as real ones

When a TV series ends it feels like losing an old friend. Borgen bestie Birgitte is already gone, now we have to carry on without Carrie, too
19 December 2013

It is one of the stranger symptoms of metropolitan life. Many of us, reluctantly or otherwise, spend more time with our favourite TV screw-ups than we do with our dearest friends.

Take Carrie Mathison from Homeland. All over the place. Attachment issues. Always banging on about al Qaeda or whatever. You bitch about her the whole time behind her back.

But she’s always there for you, isn’t she? Same time, same place each week. She doesn’t live in an obscure bit of Battersea that means you have to get a bus. She doesn’t cancel last minute because her boss is being a dick (Saul? Never!).

In fact, if you can bear the INCREDIBLY IRRITATING adverts on 4oD, she’ll even make herself available at your convenience. She’s a ledge like that, Cazza. It may be a relationship of convenience rather than a relationship of choice — but so often, these are the ones we rely on.

And when they leave our lives, as they surely must, it is all the harder to take.

Just like that nice Danish lady Birgitte Nyborg did last week, when Borgen ended, never to begin again. Or Breaking Bad before that. Soon you find yourself scrolling through your contacts with a vague plan to head over to Jesse Pinkman’s yard for a couple of bongs and a game of air hockey … until you realise that JESSE PINKMAN IS NOT REAL, you never had his number in the first place and Albuquerque is even more of a mish than Battersea.

Recently, a group of academics in America concluded a decade-long study that suggests we grieve for our lost TV friends in much the same way that we would our actual friends if they died. Perhaps overstating the case? It also sounds like a craven attempt to generate publicity from a spurious pop cultural premise, so I won’t embarrass the university by mentioning it by name, but still, the fact that any academic thought has gone into this suggests all is not lost.

Instead of a “bunch of people who like watching The Sopranos”, we are a “consumption collective”, apparently — a group of people defined by a common point of contact. “Our research contributes to understanding of what happens to a consumer collective when the focus of the community is extinguished,” said the leader of the study. “In the end, consumption sociality may itself be a victim of brand loss.”

He means, I think, that once our favourite programme ends, what we miss is less the drama itself than the rituals that surround it. With Homeland, whose third series ends this Sunday, it means that we will no longer spend Sunday nights having fitful torture dreams and arrive to work on Monday morning ready to discuss the ramifications of Iranian facial hair.

With Borgen, we no longer have any contact with that strange alter-universe in Copenhagen, where MPs are noble and even conscience-driven. (The delightful actress Birgitte Hjort Sørensen is currently appearing in Coriolanus at the Donmar Warehouse, by way of consolation). How will political commentators cope?

With Breaking Bad, I miss the steady wrench of the plot — but I also miss those time-honoured BB rituals. The in-depth discussions of Walter White’s moral deterioration. The Monday night Netflix sessions at our friends’ place. The conspiracy theories that abounded on the internet.

Still, surely the main reason we mourn the loss of our TV heroes lies in the form and scope of the new, HBO model of series. By the time The Wire had ended, I’d invested something like 60 hours deciphering the street speak of Baltimore. That’s roughly as long as it would take to read Bleak House. It was also one of the first series to devote as much time to character development as it did to plot.

Indeed, the great series from the present Golden Age of TV are all built around one (or many) flawed and complex characters: Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper, Sarah Lund, Hannah Horvath. They have far more nuances, flaws and contradictions than you could ever manage in a film character. It’s why the death of a Stringer Bell or an Omar is quite so gut-wrenching.

I suppose that means you can console yourself: feelings of character-loss are a symptom of having really excellent TV to watch. No one ever went into mourning when Lovejoy was cancelled. And there’s always that Game of Thrones box set if you’re still not over Carrie come the NY.

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