Remote Life: Going to the movies a better date choice than watching TV

What better day for me to write about television than Valentine’s Day. I love TV, and Valentine’s Day is all about love, right?

But the more I thought about the mechanics of Valentine’s Day and dating in general, the two seemed less and less compatible.

Granted you can make a connection with someone over a TV show, but watching a show together isn’t the greatest date activity. Despite everything that’s wrong with the movie industry today, such as the barrage of sequels and high ticket prices, going out to the movies remains the better option.

This was a depressing discovery.

The movies being a better date activity than TV watching has nothing to do with the movie itself. No, I’m not talking about canoodling in the back. This applies to the people that actually watch the movie too.

It’s essentially a way to define an outing as a date. It shows a desire to be seen with another person in public. It shows a willingness to spend money to be with that person (even if you go dutch). Not to mention, it shows a mutual understanding that this is something more than hanging out.

Unless of course it’s the middle of the afternoon and your date brings a friend; then things can get a little more muddled. But essentially, the only point in going out to a movie is to acknowledge that the outing is romantic.

When I walked out of “The Vow” this weekend, there was a girl quite literally hanging onto a guy’s arm with tears streaming down her face. It was abundantly clear that they were on a date. I’m not sure how well it was going, but that’s not the point.

While I like to think that asking someone to come over and watch a TV show is a wonderfully romantic gesture about mutual interests, there’s definitely something about it that sounds … not so much like a date.

Let’s be honest. It sounds lazy at best and like a booty call at worst.

Now when I say dating, I should be a little more specific. For those in long-term relationships, staying in and watching a TV show together on the couch sounds pretty adorable. You know the drill, cuddling up to “your show” and throwing popcorn in each other’s mouths. My understanding of long-term relationships is based mostly on ABC Family shows, so I could be romanticizing it a bit.

But for the rest of us out there, it’s not quite so cute.

I like to compare it to the “uncanny valley,” a robotics term that’s been adopted by the film industry when talking about computer generated humans in movies. As technology becomes better and better at generating more human-like characters, there’s a moment where the character looks just short of real and the audience becomes incredibly uncomfortable.

The most famous example is “The Polar Express” where they used motion-capture technology to turn Tom Hanks into a glassy-eyed train conductor who sang about hot chocolate.

Television dates are like Tom Hanks in “The Polar Express.” They look a lot like a date, but there’s something off about the whole thing.

Let me back up a little and say, this isn’t based on a specific experience, so much as I spent a lot of time trying to imagine the perfect television-centric date and came up empty. If someone has found a way to overcome the “uncanny valley” of television dates, please prove me wrong.

In some ways it’s a nice discovery. You don’t have to have the perfect show in common with someone before you go on a date. You can pick a movie out of a hat, and you’re already ahead of all the people watching TV together.

I feel like I’m betraying a part of myself by saying that, but it’s true.

It also gives me reason to ignore John Cusack’s narrow-minded adage in the movie “High Fidelity,” “What really matters is what you like, not what you are like.” This is something I think college students can get hung up on pretty easily.

So for all the TV lovers out there, no matter how much you enjoy your shows, you can let them go for a night out. Take a chance on the movies and know that “Firefly” will be there if your date turns up with his or her roommate.

If you were tricked into a television date this Valentine’s Day, email Suchland at [email protected].