The Cutprice Guignol

I thought long and hard what to put in this final spot for The TV That Made Me series. There are so many shows that I’ve loved so deeply that I could have put here for simply defining the time in my life when I found them – American Horror Story, Vikings, Riverdale, Hannibal, Carnivale, the latter of which I initially planned to put here. But those are shows I’ve just loved, and, however deep that love might go, at the end of the day, it is just that: a really fucking great show that I really fucking loved at a specific point in my life. When it comes to shows that have defined me in a deeper sense, I have to turn to something that I don’t love. Something I actually hate quite a lot. Something like…Glee.

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When I was about fifteen, living in the arse-end of nowhere with two buses to somewhere that passed by at seemingly random intervals on specific yet secret days, I would catch what was known as the Cinema Bus into the city every Saturday and head to the movies with my friends and pretend to be a real teenager for a while. Which was great. Right up until the point where I had to come home.

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When it comes to the shows that made me, I’ve really been beating around the bush so far. Sure, True Blood introduced me to sex and sexuality and helped me define my career into my adult life, and Neon Genesis Evangelion basically saved my life when I was first dealing with mental illness, but what’s that, truly, in comparison to The Simpsons?

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“Bro,” I greeted my brother, who was probably sitting in front of an impossibly intricate and clever spaceship design simulator when I walked into his room. To give you a sense of the scene, I had chewed my nails down to tiny stubs, but still insisted on painting on the shape I thought they should be on the exposed skin in black; my hair, greasy, my skin, flaky, my clothes, unmentionable.

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