Mad Atoms

Dear DVR,  

We had a great run recording and watching TV shows together. We time-shifted, we avoided commercials, we kept some of my favorite episodes around for a second viewing. We were as close as a human being and a rented machine could be, which is why it was so traumatizing when my cat threw up on top of your air vent and your circuit board was fried by dripping puke juice.  

Now we’ll never get to catch up on all those Daily Show episodes from last week or part 2 of that History Channel documentary about the industrial revolution, or the past season of Breaking Bad I was holding off on starting until I had some more free time on my hands. But it’s not just all the shows I lost from your vomit encrusted hard drive that I’ll miss, it’s our special relationship.  

You knew things about me few people ever did. You knew I recorded Meet The Press every week but rarely ever actually watched it. You knew I recorded an entire season of Rescue Me but stopped watching after two episodes when I felt they were just doing the same old shit. You knew I occasionally paused the nude scenes from Boogie Nights for minutes at a time. And even though it’s scientifically impossible, I suspect you even knew that all those Keeping Up With The Kardashians episodes were actually recorded by my girlfriend. 

But even if they were my mine, I know you would never judge me.

Now I’m not going to pretend our relationship was perfect. It annoyed me when you couldn’t tell the difference between new episodes of The Soup and reruns so you would just recorded every single one of the ten airings E! schedules each day. It infuriated me when you had a glitch and recorded MSNBC for 24 hours in a row, making your hard drive too full to record the shows I actually requested.

And it still hurts to talk about those two episodes of 30 Rock that were somehow deleted before I ever had a chance to watch them. Even in your death, I refuse to admit even the slightest bit of responsibility for that one. That was your bad. 

I can only hope you’ve gone to a better place, DVR. Someplace where you can record an unlimited amount of channels at once. Someplace where power outages don’t make you reset. Someplace where your wires have room to run free instead of being crammed behind a TV stand, entangled with other strange cords coming from electronic devices you’ve never even seen. Someplace where cats don’t puke. 

Finally, I’d feel dishonest if I didn’t tell you about my new DVR. It’s a newer model Motorola with a sleek black outer casing.

Inside it’s got a hard drive twice as big as yours and an updated onscreen layout much friendlier for HD channels. It’s got a larger display, a better remote, and came with a free HDMI cable. Oh, and its air vents are on the back instead of on top, so nothing’s dripping into this one anytime soon. I think I found “the one,” and we’re going to be together forever. 

I mean, I loved you, DVR, and I cherished our time together, but did you really think I was going to stay single for the rest of my life?