The power of pause

by tess

Just for the record I think that DVRs are the best invention ever. Better than frozen blueberry waffles, better than Super Target, better than Dream Angels push-up bras.

Obviously it’s great to Record your favorite shows. Like many Americans I was too dim-witted to set the clock on my old VCR so using the timer to auto-tape was a little befuddling. DVRs are magic – no clock-setting! And finally the technology to tape two shows at once! Of course that would require two shows being on TV simultaneously that deserve to be recorded … but that’s a different issue.

I love that you can Reverse to re-watch a funny scene (Darrell from The Office asking Michael Scott, “Are you wearing ladies clothes?”) or hear something you missed due to the cat screaming in your ear. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve missed something on the radio (stupid traffic!) and wished I could hit the non-existent rewind button to hear it again. But, DOH!, no car radio DVR.

The best feature is Pause. Of course you can pause to answer the phone and talk to your mother for an hour without missing a single bodice-ripping moment of The Tudors. But more importantly, you can take a break when there’s an uncomfortable moment of confrontation. Sometimes when I’m watching a show I’m not really prepared for the escalating hostility between two characters. I often need to take a moment and consider how I’m going to feel about the forthcoming friction. (Apparently there’s a shrink inside my head incessantly asking me: How do you feeeeeeeeel about that?) Having collected my thoughts, I can rejoin the fray fully prepared to pause again if the battle becomes too bloody.

This quirky little habit makes watching TV with other people very challenging. Some People Who Shall Remain Nameless don’t think you should take a little breather Every Single Time the Show Gets Good. But I’m just not adept at confrontation. Even confrontation that has nothing to do with me. Even confrontation that’s totally not-real and on a huge television.

William Ross Wallace famously wrote “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world.” That may still be true in some places, but where I live it’s the hand that hogs the remote that controls the house. And since that hand belongs to me, we’ll continue to embrace our DVR, to record shows that we’ll never have time to watch, to rewind every jaw-dropping scene again and again, and, most of all, to pause every time Don Draper cheats on Betty or Jack Bauer almost dies trying to save the world.