Oprah, Dr. Phil, and America's Next Top Model
Cordelia glanced through her living-room for the 1103rd time that day. She was ill, and even though she couldn't have imagined thinking like this 3 years ago, she hated it. Angel and Wesley were probably at the office right now doing interesting cases, or at least pretending to do so, so it would seem like they had lives. Cordy wanted to join them in that! She was probably the best at pretending to have a life! At least she didn't spend her Saturday nights with a crossword puzzle. Not yet, anyway. If she would continue to abandon most of her 'real' social contacts by not replying to emails or a phone call then she could probably already ask Wesley to buy her the special edition. The one that included word searchers, too.
Great.
Funny how much depressing thoughts you get when you're having a paid sick day.
'Dennis, remote?', she requested, and waited until her friendly house ghost handed her the remote control, her key to distraction.
'Let's see what's on tv..'. Cordy turned on the telly and started switching channels for a while. It had been a long while since she'd spent a day in front of the TV, and therefore was slightly surprised to see that commercial-time had even doubled! When a show was on tv for 50 minutes, you could count on having to watch commercials at least 25 minutes of that time.
Strange, and annoying, because every time Oprah was getting interesting and brought Cordy's mind off vampires and demons she was interrupted by a man with a smile, the kind that blinded you, who told her to buy Colgate tooth paste because it was better for her denture.
'I don't have a denture!', Cordy pretty much shouted at the man who just never seemed to stop smiling. She was just very frustrated about not being able to take part in making this world a better place today. Nobody had ever told her that was addicting, though. Couldn't Buffy have warned her for it 'before' she started getting involved in it?
Dennis handed her the glass of water. She took it. 'Thanks, Dennis. Is that a hint? Sorry, I'll stop yelling at the tv now, I just couldn't help it. People talking about dentures annoy me. Do you have a denture? O wait... of course not, you're dead. Can't dead people have dentures, though?'. She stopped her babbling soon, realising the ghost did have ears and it probably wasn't very pleasant for him to listen to this.
'O, look, there's Oprah again'. Fortunately, the rest of the episode there were no more commercials and Cordy was able to keep her frustration-level as low as possible. After Oprah, Dr. Phil started. She wasn't very into the bald guy helping people for publicity, but it was this or a documentary about the mating of chimpanzees. Strangely enough Dr. Phil suddenly seemed a lot more attractive.
'You did cheat on her you jerk!', Cordy yelled again at the tv, when some young man that already looked like a horrible Don Juan claimed to always have been faithful and loyal to his girlfriend. Now they were trying to find out then how he got Aids if his girlfriend had never slept with someone else before! Dr. Phil seemed puzzled and didn't know what to do. Cordelia frowned. She had expected more from the man.
Dr. Phil was followed by America's Next Top Model, which was very depressing for Cordy. 'They do not look like that in real life! It has to be something about the camera!', she told herself, trying to not feel guilty over the Chinese food she had eaten last night. Many calories.
Around 10 o'clockCordelia let Dennis turn off the tv and went to bed , having seen enough depressing stuff on tv to make sure she didn't need to have another sick day in the following 10 years. Tomorrow she would go to work again, she decided,and turned off the lights with a smile.
She suddenly felt a lot better.