Who is smarter? Me or my TV?

A high school diploma. Three years of university. Twenty-eight years on the job.

And last Friday night I’m staring at a television that is way smarter than I am.

The main TV in our house recently died so while I was at work my husband went out and bought a new one. One of those “smart” TVs.

I got home from work last Friday for an evening alone. The guys in my household had gone fishing so it was just me and the new TV.

I turned it on. So far, so good, although things rapidly went downhill from there.

I pushed a button called TV. It felt like the logical thing to do since I was staring at a TV and not a couch, washing machine or refrigerator. But after pushing that button about 49 times I could still only get one channel on the TV – and not a great one at that.

I read the manual that came in the box with the TV. I downloaded an electronic version of the manual I found online. I checked the wires and connections to the TV. And I started watching tutorials on YouTube while sending texts to my husband telling him he had bought the most complicated TV on the planet.

At that point I hated the TV and the remote control that came with it.

This smart TV was making me feel pretty stupid.

I found myself longing for the 13-inch black-and-white TV that I had as a teenager where the most complicated thing used to be figuring out how to record a program on my VCR – or worse, trying to explain how to do it to my mom over the phone during an ‘Another World’ emergency.

After about an hour of troubleshooting with this new TV I found myself wondering what would happen if I used the other remote we had that is connected to our digital TV receiver.

As they say in community halls – BINGO!

I suddenly went from one channel to hundreds of them with the push of the guide button. Now on the new TV remote I was steering clear of the TV button and instead opting for the HDMI one.

However, two hours into the process I was still trying out how to get Netflix on the TV.

And then I finally decided to click on the SOURCE button on the remote. This opened up a whole new TV world with numerous apps that are on the TV or that can be installed. I started out by watching a few YouTube videos and then tried some of the other apps before finally stumbling across the Netflix link. I stopped everything I was doing and watched a movie.

When the movie ended – it’s now after midnight – I went back to discovering things on the TV. Links and apps required my email and password logins. By 1 a.m. it literally felt as if I had done more typing than I had all day at work. And by now I was no longer debating if the TV was smart and I was stupid, rather I was starting to wonder if the TV was stupid too. But then at one point I typed in the letter T and the TV pulled up my name. “Whoa….” I said out loud, “This TV is smart.” Or maybe it’s because I had typed my name 367 times by then. Or so it seemed.

Finally! I was starting to understand the TV. I was in my groove. Around 1 a.m. I sent a text to my husband retracting my “you need to be a rocket scientist to figure this TV out” text from hours earlier.

“OK. Now that I understand the TV I love it!” I told him. And very soon I was going to find out just how much love I was going to have.

Around 2 a.m. (seriously, I was now obsessed with the TV) I stumbled across the Cineplex app. When I clicked onto it I discovered I could rent or buy movies.

And there it was – Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again! (I think I’ve mentioned in passing before that I am a huge ABBA fan.)

By 3 a.m., after some more dogged determination and troubleshooting, I had purchased and downloaded the Mamma Mia 2 movie on the TV. It’s now in my TV library.

To celebrate I fast-forwarded to the Dancing Queen scene of the movie and danced and sang in my living room – with the volume very high – while thinking about how much I love our new TV.

Definitely a smart choice.