Personality -- as seen on TV

Citizens of Southern California, I am about to make a shocking and blasphemous plea. Please consider it carefully, though your first instinct might be to excommunicate me from Tinseltown forever.

For the love of yourself and the sake of your current and future relationships, you must stop watching television. For at least a year. No HBO. No NBC. Not even the Animal Planet.

This entreaty is based on an unofficial survey of local dating patterns over the last few years -- observations that lead me to believe television might lie at the root of all our problems. More specifically, TV characters -- and our tendency to mimic them.

If I were to announce at a cocktail party that I was, say, the reincarnation of Queen Guinevere or the biological manifestation of Jane Eyre, people would think I was crazy. Intellectual, but crazy.

If, on the other hand, I were to say, “I really see myself as a Carrie Bradshaw,” everyone would know immediately what I was talking about.

And that is scary.

People have become so accustomed to “acting the part” that they actually become their favorite television characters -- down to their fashion sense, speech and romantic tendencies. But this is doomed to fail, because life does not emulate TV. Regular people don’t have a costume budget, hotshot joke writers or, most important, a script supervisor to make sure everything turns out according to plan.

A man I recently dated used to watch “Entourage” obsessively. He would hang on Ari’s every overblown word, gesture, mannerism. Gradually, I began to notice bits of Ari and other characters manifesting themselves in this man’s life.

If you’re a fictional Hollywood hero with a huge bank account and a fully edited life, you live in a land of babes, threesomes, booty calls and urban cougars -- and you can refer to them as such. But if you’re just an ordinary dude with an excess of bravado and an ability to parrot colloquialisms, you will be in big trouble.

“Since when does a stocky, khaki-wearing, middle-management man from upstate New York actually talk like that?” I asked one day. Shortly thereafter, I bailed forever.

I know it wasn’t an isolated incident. I see bits of Ari and his friends everywhere. If not them, then other characters whom I recognize from the small screen.

Below, a list of the main offenders and the misperceptions they perpetrate:

“Sex in the City” -- Women come in four types, and all of them are obsessed with shoes.

“The Hills” -- Back-stabbing, shady hookups and plastic surgery are dandy, as long as you get publicity.

“The Girls Next Door” -- Feels good to be a hooker.

“Grey’s Anatomy” -- Office flings with older married men lead to unbridled romance and career respect.

“The Sopranos” -- All aging, balding Italian/Greek blue collars “got juice,” even though they live in Burbank and see their Jersey shore cousins only every other Thanksgiving.

“The King of Queens,” “Everyone Loves Raymond” -- Fat, unsuccessful, sullen wife-haters are lovable, especially when drunk.

“Nip/Tuck” -- Doctors, especially surgeons, are rock stars in white coats and often report to work hung over, or directly out of a 24-hour sex binge, or having just committed a felony.

And “Entourage” -- Don’t even get me started.

You read this, and you think I’m being witty. But look around you, and you’ll see the Tonys, the Julians, the Girls Next Door, and you’ll realize. We’re stuck in the TV slipstream, where the most important question is: What would McDreamy’s lady do?

The only remedy is to cut ourselves off. Not forever . . . just long enough to recover our own stumbling, imperfect but authentic selves once again.