Best TV Kiss: Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn, Alias
Best Use of Song: Equal toss up between “Shall We Dance” from The King and I in my favorite television proposal of all time, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel AND Patrick Brewer’s cover of “The Best” on Schitt’s Creek.
TV Boyfriend: Michael Cordero, Jane the Virgin
Worst Couple: Lane and Zach, Gilmore Girls. She deserved SO much better. They just really couldn’t recover after Adam Brody went to The O.C.
TV Hot Take: The Battle of Winterfell is NOT too dark, stop whining.
Best Profession of Love: “I love you, in a really, really big – pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window – unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you.” - Meredith, Greys Anatomy. I tried SO hard not to be this basic, but describing feelings as “unfortunate” has always stuck with me.
Alternate Ending: Literally anything else, Girls
Show We're All Sleeping On: GLOW…. holy shit. Trust two female playwrights to gracefully weave a Cambodian genocide plot into a hilarious, colorful show about women’s wrestling.
Cancelled Too Soon: Good Girls Revolt
TV Role You'd Steal: The fact that they went and did Mrs. America without me is crushing. Rose Byrne kills as Gloria Steinem, but yes I’d rob her blind of those floral prints if I could.
Couple That Should Have Been: Josh and Donna, The West Wing. I mean, I know they were, but we deserved more.
Biggest Influence on your Sexual Awakening: Lost. I was so obsessed with Jack and Kate, but really I think I wanted somebody to kiss me tenderly in a jungle.
Megan is an actor and a human woman with a lot of opinions on television, love, and why people do the things that they do. She’s finally putting all those skills to good use with this podcast.
Megan’s obsession with television romance began in 2005. After being forced to stay home sick from a Girl Scout camping trip, her parents tried to make up for it by introducing her to their current favorite TV show: Alias. Little did they know an addictive personality would rapidly emerge and she promptly tore through the DVD box sets, obsessively tracking Sydney and Vaughn’s romance. Megan can tell you the episode that almost any TV couple first kisses and can tell you the TV shows she watched beginning to end only to learn that two characters NEVER kiss.
However, even as Megan moved out of her moody romance-obsessed teen years and into a full adult that could appreciate, you know, a beautifully-shot battle scene, or a nuanced plot about motherhood, or well-executed social and political commentary in television…. what she learned from all those years following these fictional couples helped her understand what her non-fictional friends (and self) were going through. When we’re in the midst of a complicated romance ourselves, it is hard to make sense of the situation. However, in television the dynamic between two people is often presented objectively. We understand both characters, we understand where they’re both coming from and why they’re acting the way that they are. Sometimes by finding a way to relate real life to fiction, we are able to see things more clearly. We find catharsis in seeing our own struggles and joys portrayed on television by people a bit more beautiful and a bit more witty than ourselves.
This podcast is about highlighting that catharsis, and potentially giving unsolicited advice, which is absolutely Megan’s speciality.
To learn more about Megan, visit www.megan-fitzgerald.com
Or follow her on instagram @onlymegan815 or twitter @onlymegan815 and ask her why the 815, because it is not at all birthdate related, it’s an embarassing television related reason.