Bartleby the Gamer

Intervention is my current favorite television show (A & E, Sunday nights, 10 pm). Usually alcoholics and drug addicts are featured, but every once in a while they mix it up a little. A couple of weeks ago they devoted a show to a video game addict. I thought it was going to be lame, but it turned out to be pretty interesting. He was a young guy, recently out of high school, relatively smart; he even had an attractive girlfriend. Apparently his parents' divorce screwed him up when he was younger and he began spending his entire day playing video games. Video games, it seemed, offered a safe refuge from the unpredictable and scary adult world. He agreed to go to rehab after the intervention, finished the program, but returned to "gaming" as soon as he got home. The show ended with a haunting image of this guy, sitting on a couch working the video game controller, eyes wide, staring into the glare from the TV screen, hollowed out and completely lost. It sort of reminded me of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener."

This is what I like most about the show. You never know how it's going to end. Sometimes the happy ending you think you've just witnessed (the addict agreeing to go to rehab) turns on a dime to complete heartbreak in the update that accompanies the credits (relapses, arrests, even death). No Oprah or Dr. Phil-orchestrated happy endings here. And when there is a happy ending, as in last week's episode when an alcoholic/crack addict finally got his shit together, you feel it all the more intensely.