The Twilight madness currently circulating around the world has given me pause to think and consider the nature of fandom: to wit, I am a pretty lousy fan.

I know this because there have been numerous occasions where I have dumped my "favourite show ever" because the magic wasn't there anymore. No use - to paraphrase my favourite self-help book - slogging it out in televisual solitaire a deux, right?

The thing about Twilight is, well, it's mostly shit; the books start out okay and end up bodice-ripping howlers that even Mills & Boon would likely deem "a bit too much" - and yet the fans love them. They love every moment of Stephanie Meyer's law of diminishing prose returns.

If you suggest to the "Twi-hards" that, say, Eclipse is a complete piece of trash setting feminism back 75 years, they'll come up with a defense worthy of a Year 10 debating final.

I wish I could be like them.

See, back in Year 8, I discovered ER (then known, more irritatingly for subeditors the world over, as e.r.) and I was hooked. I remember my aunt had told me that Steven Spielberg and Michael Crichton were involved, which was all I really needed to hear, and all of a sudden I was the biggest ER fan in the universe.

Every week I watched (and usually taped) the show; I had a scrapbook dedicated to ER-related clippings; I was going to marry Noah Wyle, don't you worry about that.

But - flash forward fifteen seasons and almost as many years - when I heard that the show was finally coming to a close earlier this year, it was like hearing that an old high school sweetheart had been married, or that someone you worked with ages ago had died; I suddenly thought, wow, remember when I loved that show?

I tried to get back into the swing of things in time to see ER shuffle off the TV coil, but I couldn't. See, when it came to County, for me it was all about these guys:



And all of a sudden I was meant to care about these dudes? Who the hell were they?



For me, the show had died along with Dr Robert "Rocket" Romano half-way through Season 10. Romano had lost an arm in a helicopter accident a few seasons earlier, so when the writing team decided to send him out, crushed under a falling helicopter, they lost me.



It seemed an unnecessarily sadistic end, despite Romano's obvious failings, and signalled - to me, at least - that the show was heading in a direction I couldn't abide. ER (even with its occasionally speccy "OMG fifteen-car-pileup on Christmas!!" storylines) had always reeled me in with emotional pyrotechnics - now they were dropping helicopters on people?

I stayed the rest of Season 10 out and then, fairly quickly, it was no longer a part of my life.

(Perhaps the show regained its footing later on; one holiday I may sit down with a box set and in the television equivalent of a 'High Fidelity date', work out whether or not I made the right decision in breaking up with ER.)

Similarly, a few years later in my high school career, I became a card-carrying member of the Dawson's Creek faithful. I had the Dawson's Creek stationery set, posters of Jen and Pacey; you name it. I loved that show - my whole family did! Some intense emotional bonding went down over that Season 1 finale, let me tell you.

By the time the team finished high school at the end of Season 4, and Joey and Dawson FINALLY got their shit together (again), I felt a lovely catharsis. 



EARLY 21ST CENTURY CONTEMPORARY ROCK GOOSEBUMPS OFF THE CHARTS YOU GUYS.

It felt like a natural place to end the series; it wasn't that long after I had finished high school myself, and I thought, "Congratulations, guys, we all made it!"

And then they went to college.

I lasted about five episodes into Season 5 before I wanted to drive nails into my eyeballs, and soon things were over between me and the Capeside crew.

It's possible I was even more pissed about Dawson's having continued beyond its time than I was about ER; for years I refused to watch the finale - and when I found out that they killed off Jen (for, presumably, being the only one with a functional sex life), I nearly set fire to my television.



Despite all this, I miss those days of intense television fandom; I've searched high and low for a replacement love, but nothing really fits. There's probably a "you can't go home again" in here somewhere.)

I toyed with the idea of losing myself in True Blood, but couldn't quite go there. (No longer being a teenager may have something to do with it). Hopefully one day a show will come along and hook itself into me with the full force of Dawson's or ER again.

There is, after all, something wonderful about throwing yourself into the madness of obsession - just ask the Twi-hards.