Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, at a moment when inflation has the price of your average steak-and-martini night out skyrocketing, some couples are turning to a more budget-friendly method of romantic connection this Valentine’s Day: the couples’ TV show. It’s one that you choose together, watch together, and hold sacrosanct. (In other words, if you get ahead on The White Lotus before your partner, you’re dead meat.)
Obsessive TV-watching is in my genes—legend has it that my dad had to convince my mom to turn off The Today Show while she was in labor with me—and I pretty much always have some show or other on as background noise. My partner, R., however, is far more judicious about screen time, and won’t settle for just any old episode of Antiques Roadshow. It’s taken us almost a year to sync our TV-watching habits, but after failed experiments rewatching I Think You Should Leave and Sharp Objects, we’ve finally settled on a show we can watch together without one person feeling like they’re humoring the other. The perfect thing turned out to be What We Do in the Shadows, the Jermaine Clement-created series about four vampires living together in Staten Island, which is the perfect blend of laugh-out-loud funny and weirdly emotionally resonant (and, crucially, not too scary to affect either of our already-fragile sleep cycles).
I wish R. and my couple’s show had a slightly better story behind it than “we both like weird humor,” but for a more romantic TV-vampire saga, I turned to Autostraddle community editor Vanessa Friedman, whose relationship with her now-fiancée began with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The two had been friends for years, but when Friedman posted a Buffy-centric instagram Story and her then-friend responded, she ended up asking if said friend wanted to rewatch the whole show with her from the beginning.
“She kissed me during the episode where Xander gets trapped in his teacher’s basement because it turns out she’s a giant bug and wants to eat him because he’s a virgin, and after that, the rest is history,” says Friedman, adding that the now-couple even made Buffy-themed cocktails and dressed up in costume for their first shared viewing of the show in 2021. And, really, after that kind of commitment, how could they not get engaged?
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