"Grey’s Anatomy," "Gossip Girl" and "Pretty Little Liars" don’t seem to have a lot in common at first glance. Yes, they’re all shows on television. Yes, they’re all pretty dramatic, even for prime-time TV. They are truly unrealistic in every sense of the word -- entertaining, but absolutely ridiculous. However, these three shows have another distinctive similarity. More often than I thought possible, couples off these shows often come up on my Twitter feed, almost always accompanied by the hashtag "#goals." My first time watching "Grey’s Anatomy," I completely agreed. Meredith and Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd were totally my goals. Don’t even get me started on Chuck Bass, "Gossip Girl"’s resident bad boy, and his relationship with Blair Waldorf. He was so mysterious and flawed, and who doesn’t want that? When it comes to "Pretty Little Liars," I mean, although completely unrealistic, the main character and the relationship she had with her teacher was sort of romantic. Those were just my opinions, but the entire internet also loves these shows and their respective couples.
[If you’re currently watching any of these on Netflix, there will be spoilers ahead. You have been warned.]
I recently starting watching "Grey’s Anatomy" from the beginning and realized that Meredith and Derek are not in any way #goals. He always thinks himself to be more important than Meredith in every way, and often lashes out at her when she tries to point this out. Derek forces Meredith to take steps in their relationship that she isn’t comfortable with. Not to mention that he doesn’t find it necessary to tell Meredith he’s already married while they spend months dating.
This got me thinking of other toxic television relationships that people worship, which is what brought me to "Gossip Girl" and "Pretty Little Liars." All three shows are riddled with ridiculous relationships. The couple of Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf is absolutely horrific, but also adored. Not only does Chuck attempt to rape someone in the first few episodes, but also tells Blair he loves her as she’s about to get married to someone else, and later tries to trade her for a hotel. Totally adorable, right? Ezra and Aria of "Pretty Little Liars" are another great example of a toxic television relationship. Sixteen-year-old Aria meets Ezra in a bar that she snuck into, where they viciously make out. How sexy. When it turns out Ezra is Aria’s teacher – because she is still in high school – they decide to continue their relationship, because that’s the smart thing to do, I'm sure.
Now, obviously these “relationships” have to be taken with a grain of salt, because they are only actors playing parts to get good ratings. Of course characters have a special place in our hearts and shows make us emotional – there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is, do the people of my age think these are healthy relationships? Are these really “people” we should be idolizing? When we focus on these toxic relationships as something we want in our own lives, we are saying that we are OK with being in those types of relationships. We are OK being with someone that overshadows us, is a potential rapist, or is knowingly in a position of power over us and takes advantage of it.
Again, these are just television characters, but we idolize them far too much for me to be OK with it. I know we are just talking about retweets or posts on Facebook, but that is a huge part of how we relate to each other nowadays. Television is the master of false advertising, and we need to start separating reality from fantasy. The true relationship “goal” should be to have a healthy, comfortable and stable relationship.
