I have always found a happy place in network television shows and streaming platforms. I enjoy the escape from reality and the glimpse of what it would be like to live in an alternate universe. As a writer, TV also supplies an outlet for my own creativity, allowing me to weave original characters into their plots.
But in the midst of my love for all things TV, I’m also able to recognize one fatal flaw:
Television sucks at showing healthy relationships.
While I rather enjoy the seemingly endless relationship dramatics, highs and lows, love triangles, and the TV couple edits on Instagram that encompass my feed, I also understand that television needs to do better at showing its audiences what good and healthy relationships are really like.
Just because characters are fictional doesn’t mean their relationships have no real-world implications.
Media is a huge piece of our socialization as children and adolescents, and TV plays a significant role in that. What we see on TV often contributes to our own perceptions, especially our perception of love. When we see unhealthy or abusive relationships portrayed on TV, it warps our own ideas about love.
Let’s take Grey’s Anatomy for instance. It’s scandalous, it’s dramatic, and it has undoubtedly shaped viewer perceptions of dating, marriage, love, and romance. The relationships are “made for TV,” but at what cost?
As much as I enjoyed watching the relationship of Derek and Meredith, it’s not completely off to say that their relationship was unhealthy at times. Between the on-again off-again nature of their relationship in the early seasons to Derek comparing Meredith to her mother time and time again knowing it would hurt her, it’s pretty on the mark to say that it was. At one point during an argument, he even tells her that she’ll be a bad mother.
And don’t get me started on Cristina and Owen, or any of Owen Hunt’s relationships for that matter.
Even with my own love for the show, I can recognize that the relationship between Scandal’s Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant is unhealthy and can be manipulative at times. Likewise, the relationship between Grant and his now ex-wife Mellie is both verbally and emotionally abusive. Cyrus even almost had his husband James killed before backing out at literally the last second.
I’m not saying you can’t love or admire imperfect television couples, and I’m also not saying that television couples are not allowed to fight, argue, or disagree with one another – that would be unrealistic, both for television and for reality.
What I am saying, however, is that poor examples of love run rampant in media, and our idea of love is constantly warped by fiction. When a TV relationship is toxic, we may not always recognize it and when those signs start to turn up in our own relationships, we don’t see the red flags for what they are. Seeing unhealthy or abusive behaviors in media limits our ability to identify the warning signs of abuse.
We come to believe that if our partner mistreats us, that’s okay. If our partner degrades us, shames us, or calls us names out of malice, it “just happens.” If they shove us around with the intention to harm us, even just once, it’s “just a shove,” not abusive behavior.
Thankfully, the number of healthy relationships portrayed on television today appears to be growing. But even then, unhealthy and abusive relationships still seem to pervade the small screen for the wrong reasons, sending the wrong message to an increasingly impressionable audience.
Unhealthy behavior is not always abusive, but abusive behavior is always unhealthy. It’s one thing to purposely showcase unhealthy or abusive relationships for the sake of showing them for what they are and/or to intentionally make the distinction between healthy relationships and those that are unhealthy or abusive. In that case, the message being sent to viewers is completely different. Maddie’s domestic violence storyline in 9-1-1 does an exceptional job at this. On the other hand, it’s another thing entirely to portray these relationships solely for the dramatics and as “loving” without understanding the implications of doing so.
This is not to say that these types of relationships can never be portrayed on TV; I believe two things can be true at the same time: they can be portrayed but they can also send a bad message. With that being said, just because you can portray unhealthy and abusive relationships doesn’t mean you always should –
Especially when you send the wrong message instead of the right one.
Can’t we have healthy “made for TV” relationships too?