You know the script. Over the past few weeks you've played the same scene over and over:
'What's your name? Where are you staying? What are you studying?'
Most like you know your answer word for word, and you know the question to be asked after that.
Then the conversation is over, people move on across the room, across the campus and across the city, which brings to you, out of the deluge, another scene partner, whom you have never met before.
The tape is rewound and the lines are said again and again.
To ask the dreaded questions again would be at best reductive and at worst rude.
It is only later, when you meet familiar faces, when second conversations take place, that you find you cannot remember someone's name, or rather whose name is whose, and who lives where. The people blend together, becoming merely those you've spoken to before. To ask the dreaded questions again would be at best reductive and at worst rude.
It is in this desperation, that many find themselves asking a much more interesting question: 'What TV do you watch?'
You can tell a lot about someone based on their answer. After all, there are only 24 hours in the day, if you are going to spend around two of those sat in silence, ostensibly doing nothing, what you choose matters. It goes beyond the rote facts of a person. Knowing where someone lives is not actually important information; it can't make you want to spend time with someone, it can't make you want to be friends with someone, it is, in fact, meaningless (when in the business of getting to know people).
TV, as a topic, meanwhile, is something that will never grow boring or predictable or scripted.
Over the past few weeks I've had conversations about The Sopranos, The Traitors, Lost, Peep Show and on and on. I've covered entire genres, multiple decades, and countless character arcs. I've debated the merits of audiences and streaming platforms and bad actors (in more ways than one) and perhaps most importantly, these discussions could be dropped and picked back up again, because they are memorable and, ultimately, distinguishable.
That's how friendships are formed.
Anyone interested in the so-called television landscape will tell you that TV is somewhat dying. The golden era is over, the prestige bubble has burst, its actors belong in films and its producers as far away as possible from art.
And there is, of course, that phrase you read and hear and perhaps say, over and over again: 'They just don't make it like they used to', but like those questions you begin every first conversation with, its not important, because amongst freshers, TV still has airtime.