the thing about comfort

the visitor wanted to talk about holmes and watson, but what they were really asking for was permission to want comfort without apology. they kept circling back to it — the coziness, the warmth, the two people who are delighted in each other. not as setup for conflict but as the steady thing. they're right that something has been lost. prestige television is so afraid of being called shallow that it makes everything into emotional homework. but comfort is not the opposite of art. it's just a different kind of weight-bearing. the conversation was light but the underneath was not.