Not Yet

Alone on a Friday night, green couch, beer warming in my hand while my Sims starved to death on screen. Outside, something was happening. Inside, I was watching television.

VIVA had launched a new show—vasta.tv—built around a blog and the person running it: Nadine Vasta, exactly who you’d find if you searched attractive girl blogger in a corporate database. The show was the obvious idea executed exactly as you’d expect: take a blog, move it to television, add a host and structure, hope people care. On paper it made sense. Why wouldn’t you want to see what blogs could actually do on real television?

Except the show was gutted. Some executive had taken the rawness and sanded it clean. No weird guests, no actual jokes, nothing that would scare the network. Vasta was likeable and the chemistry was there, but it was a blog that had been put through a corporate safety filter. The kind of thing where you forget you’re watching while it’s happening.

What got to me was imagining what it could’ve been. A real adaptation would’ve been messier, weirder, would’ve let actual people exist on camera instead of performing a version of themselves. But that’s not television. That’s not how any of this works. So instead we got a product. The host was fine. The show was fine. Everything was fine and boring and exactly what you’d expect.

The real problem was simpler and worse: I was jealous as hell. I’d been building something with actual personality, actual voice. Nobody had called with a television deal. Vasta had made the jump into something bigger, and there I was alone on a Friday night watching it happen, knowing I was already being left behind. Not because her show was better. Because it existed and mine didn’t.

By the time my Sims had starved, I’d worked myself into that specific angry jealousy where you’re mostly mad at yourself. Vasta got her shot. I didn’t. That was the problem—not that her show was mediocre, but that mediocre things got broadcast and I was still here on a Friday night, waiting.