You have to understand — I grew up thinking love came with a midseason finale. The CW taught me that every relationship needed to burn bright, crash hard, and be soundtracked by Snow Patrol. You meet someone in Episode 3, kiss them in Episode 6, destroy them in Episode 11, and by Episode 12 you’re dramatically packing a duffel bag while someone whispers, “You were never supposed to mean this much.”

The CW wasn’t just a network; it was a lifestyle. A cultural training program in yearning, betrayal, and really good hair. Every week, it handed me emotional flashcards disguised as melodrama. The Vampire Diaries insisted soulmates always had an evil twin. One Tree Hill said passion required a tragic monologue in the rain. Gossip Girl made emotional repression look couture. Supernatural told me that if a man stared at another man for long enough, the world might end.

I thought these stories were warnings, but I absorbed them like scripture. I was fifteen, rewriting MSN bios with lyrics that made no sense to anyone who wasn’t watching the same chaos. I learned that silence was romantic, cruelty meant depth, and love only counted if it left a mark. The CW sold heartbreak as character development, and I bought the box set.

By the time I was twenty-something, I’d mistaken turbulence for connection. When someone ghosted me, I called it a plot twist. When they came back, I said it was a reboot. I kept auditioning for the role of “devastated but hot protagonist,” as though every situationship was a pilot that might finally get picked up. I’d confuse passion with pacing — mistaking adrenaline for intimacy.

In real life, nobody cuts to commercial after the fight. You just sit there, holding your phone, wondering if you should be making a speech in the rain. I kept waiting for the music cue that meant forgiveness was coming. Instead, I learned that silence just… stays silent.

And then there was Teddy. The golden boy with abs, angst, and a tennis racquet. 90210’s resident closeted jock who existed mostly in slow motion until he suddenly became a symbol. His coming-out arc arrived like a network apology — brief, glossy, and slightly hesitant, as though The CW wanted credit for progress without making anyone too uncomfortable during primetime.

I remember watching it in that strange early-2010s fog, when gay characters were allowed to exist but not take up too much oxygen. Teddy kissed a boy, had an identity crisis, smashed a mirror, and then disappeared for three episodes. The network called it representation. We called it a start.

What stuck with me wasn’t the storyline itself, but how it felt both radical and disposable at once. Teddy was written like a side quest in someone else’s emotional journey — a reminder that queerness was still treated as B-plot material. His scenes were filmed like cutaways, as if love between men needed to be edited around the main story.

For queer kids watching at the time, Teddy wasn’t just a character — he was a breadcrumb. A small, bright moment in a sea of heterosexual drama that made us feel briefly seen before the camera panned back to another Nate/Annie triangle. We didn’t get love stories; we got coded glances, subtext, and a storyline that wrapped up faster than a midseason hiatus.

The CW specialised in giving us just enough to keep us watching. Teddy’s arc felt like the network saying, We’re evolving, while quietly scheduling him for minimal screen time. There was no mess, no genuine exploration, no space for the kind of emotional chaos the straight characters were drowning in weekly.

It was queerness sanitised for comfort — a version of “acceptance” that looked good on a press release but lacked the heat, humour, and heartbreak that made the rest of 90210 so addictive. Teddy wasn’t allowed to be complicated; he had to be neat. And we were supposed to be grateful.

But even then, he mattered. Because someone, somewhere, was watching that scene in secret, heart racing, whispering, oh, so we exist here too.

What those shows never covered was the boring stuff that makes real relationships work. They ended before anyone had to buy toilet paper, share a streaming password, or talk about taxes. Every “I love you” was followed by either a betrayal or a car crash, because peace doesn’t test well with audiences. So when things got steady in my life, I’d panic. I’d look for conflict like it was a narrative requirement.

Love, I’d decided, should feel like The Season Finale — high-stakes, heart-wrenching, underscored by acoustic guitar. Nobody told me that love can also be sitting next to someone in comfortable silence while the kettle boils.

Now, I’m trying to enjoy the filler. The bottle episodes. The days where nothing explodes, nobody runs down a hallway, and no one’s ex shows up at the airport. The quiet bits that never made it to air because they weren’t dramatic enough to trend.

Real love isn’t cliffhangers and crises; it’s plot continuity. It’s making coffee the same way for someone because you remembered they like it that way. It’s the patience to sit through the slow scenes — the ones that don’t pull focus but make the whole story make sense.

Maybe I don’t want to be a protagonist anymore. Maybe I just want to be a recurring character in something kind, with decent lighting and no cancellation notice.