Inside Darren

For the past few days, I’ve been home sick from work. It hasn’t been the most terrible form of sickness - just a lot of achy muscles, a lack of energy, and a lot of rushing to the bathroom every hour or so to excrete some more diarrhea. My butt is so sore from passing mass quantities of acid feces that I can hardly sit down. On the plus side, I’ve caught up on my Maclean’s reading.

All this extra time at home has allowed me to watch more TV than I usually do, and all this time in the bathroom has caused me to think about why people on television shows are rarely, if ever, depicted using the bathroom at all.

For the average television show, say, Gilmore Girls, or one of the many CSI spin-offs, you can get around the bathroom issue fairly easily. Rory had a quick pee after she arrived at Logan’s place, but before the scene itself started, which may have opened with them watching a movie. Or the crime scene investigator made a quick detour into the nearby coffee shop to pinch a quick loaf on the way to the killer’s apartment to comb through the rug looking for dandruff for a DNA sample.

But take a show like 24, where the concept of the show lends itself to showing everything happening to each main character for a full 24 hours. Granted, I haven’t watched every episode of 24, but I’ve watched enough to know that Jack Bauer must have bladder/bowels of steel, or a very well hidden colostomy bag/catheter system in place if he’s going to chase down terrorists for a full 24 hours without dropping some weight in the loo occasionally. I drain the weasel every 4 hours on average, which means that Jack should have 6 potty breaks per season. What’s the deal?

Kudos, therefore, to the excellent example if television pioneering that is Babylon 5, which showed its characters going to the bathroom on at least 2 occasions. And as a show that’s set in the future, it showcased some interesting future bathroom technology in having the characters clean their hands by passing them through some sort of light field. After all, water use must be carefully controlled in a self-contained space station.

And washing your hands with light looks really cool.