Secondlina's Panels

I was reading an article in the Ottawa Citizen, art section (as I always do) and found this rather funny article about how love sucks on tv. 
Love does suck on tv. Not because it's bad or anything, but because it's frustrating and short lived. Characters tend to over date (Sex in the city) not date at all and wonder why people hate them (Dead like me) or simply try to seduce each other for the next five years of the show, only to be broken up the next morning they do the deed (friends, Frasier, Remington Steel, and etc)
It seems writters for tv are really good at making sexual tension fill the room, but they can't write at all a happy couple. So couples only form at the end, or what they think is the end because sometimes a show dosen't get canceled when it's supposed to. In that case, sometimes they keep the characters together and the show starts to suck, or the break then up again (anyones remember X-files where Scully and Mulder got broken up...By a bee sting of all things? Points for originality...)
So in public entertainement, either you're married from show 1 and you never break up, no matter how much you piss each other off (family sitcoms and shows like the simpsons and family guy) or you start flirting from show 1 and you never get together or if so brieftly.
People don't like happy couples?
It seems people find them boring!
How ever so depressing!
I noticed the same thing happened in manga and anime and comics too. Strangers in paradise...an excellent series where the characters are (unfortunatly) sharing an evil-half-lesbian love triangle that never gets resolved through the 17 graphic novels of it, despite the fact that two characters sleep together twice. 
Manga like Love Hina *shivers* physical proof that humans repell each other...
Fushigi Yuugi...or how many excuse can I come up with to break up with you.
And finally stories like Chrono Crusade or Slayers who seems to be bent on eliminating all signs of a relationship with magic ( Did you know dark energy causes amnesia? We sure didn't!)
Now, i'm not saying I wanna see all these people hook up (actually couple stories get to me after a while) but rather that stories should not be bent on the frustation of a single couple.
I once talked to a fellow comic artist who advised me to use "The shield"
"The shield" is a technique involving 3 couples. One is happy. The other is semi-dysfinctionnal but humoristic. The last is your frustration-fest. "The shield" protects the storyline from falling in a "Let's watch these guys hook up" festival so you can keep you solid storyline about magic and monsters. It also permits you to avoid love triangles and boredom caused by having one center stage couple. 
More people should be doing that...
Oh well, at least characters get to vent out their frustrations in the fan world...