My Summer In a Women’s Prison

I think it’s time I came clean. I have been harboring this terrible secret for too long and the guilt and stress is eating at my very soul.

You see, while the rest of you have been out frolicking in the summer sunshine, I have hidden in dark corners, waiting until no one could see me and I was at last alone, to give into my dark, terrible addiction of…….online TV series.

Oh, it started innocently enough. I quite purposefully tried to spread out my True Blood binge this year, limiting myself to two episodes a week of vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, faeries and, of course, very tight Swedish buttocks.

I suppose I do more than my fair share of squats. Does that make me a naughty Swede?

But once my supply of True Blood ran out, I had to hit the seedy cyber streets to find more.

I kept it innocent enough at first, moving on to Hemlock Grove, which is like True Blood Lite. It even stars the younger brother of our naughty Swede, Bill Skarsgard.

Will I ever be as hot as big brother? Only time will tell, my little Nordic friend.

This one came equipped with gypsy werewolves in high school, Famke Janssen as a Joan-Crawford-meets-Morticia matriarch, and something called a Upir, which is a Russian werewolf who can walk around during the day.

But when did walking around during the day become an issue for werewolves? Alcides does it all the time on True Blood…and, he rarely wears a shirt….and does household chores.

I’ll get right on that gutter once I’ve done something unimaginably sexy with this ax.

See, I was too early into my addiction to suspend disbelief. I still needed to wrap all that weird shit in logic.

Instead, I just ended up with feelings of confusion, emptiness and shame.

So, I decided to go for something of higher quality that wasn’t cut with junk.

I started to troll the Sundance Channel and found Top Of The Lake.

This one had no mythical creatures. But, it did have inbreeding, self-flagellation, teen pregnancy, meth labs and crazy face tattoos.

I had no self-control after the first episode and was back to my old ways, binging out and watching the whole thing within a week.

And I won’t lie.

It.

Felt.

Good.

From there it was a free fall into dark subject matter. I remember waking up on the couch after a jag of all 13 episodes of Orange Is The New Black. I think I had blacked out somewhere around the point where Piper is cornered in the shower by a bunch of hillbilly, born-again meth addicts with a homemade shiv.

That’s right, I was freebasing a women’s prison dramedy. But, I had blown my wad and had nothing to fall back on. I had no stash. No new season of anything for easily 6 months at best! How was this sudden detox going to play out?

But, there is always someone out there who will keep you hooked.

And along came Broadchurch. A tasty, dark, disturbing drug from those damned BBC Thugs-on-Thames. But, since it’s a current show, iTunes has become my very own mini-series methadone clinic, only allowing me to watch one episode per week.

I have five more episodes before I am once again left starved, shaking and on the street looking for my next fix.

If I can just hang on until the new season of New Girl, I may get through this yet. Yes, what I need is some lighthearted, innocent entertainment to soothe my darkened soul.

…..unless Jess becomes a Zombie coke whore.

….it could happen.