So this guy named Ed left home to seek his fortune in the big city, where he married a wonderful woman, got a job at a high-powered law firm and lived a generally charmed life. Except that his wife was cheating on him, a discovery the poor schnook made on the same day he lost his job.

Chastened by the vicissitudes of life, Ed went back home to Stuckeyville, Ohio, to start all over again.

Those of you who spend too much time in front of the tube will recognize it as the premise of “Ed,” a whimsical romantic comedy that airs on NBC. I like “Ed,” which if you knew me, wouldn’t surprise you much, given that I’m a sucker for romantic comedy. But it’s not just the boy-meets-girl and will-they-or-won’t-they that intrigues me.

It’s also that whole business about returning home.

Seems to be a recurring theme on television lately. The protagonist going back to his or her roots is also at the center of current fare like “Providence,” “Judging Amy” and “Normal, Ohio.”

Something about it resonates with me. Especially now, as the holidays begin. Maybe particularly if you’re reading this in a crowded airport, waiting for a flight to be called or on a bus traversing some lonely stretch of godforsaken someplace it resonates with you, too. Maybe you’re back in the house where you were reared or on the block that used to be the whole world, entire.

Maybe because this is what we tend to do this time of year you’re pondering the things that led you away from this place, wondering if they were ever really as important as they seemed.

Important enough to give up the whole world, entirely.

I do a lot of speaking on the subject of families, and it’s rare that someone doesn’t raise a question about the importance of community. As in the lady next door and the cop on the corner and the butcher down the block. As in people and a place to which you belong and from which you take a sense of self, an assurance of security roots.

Community, people will tell you, is an increasingly rare thing. We’ve forgotten how to talk over the back fence, shoot the breeze on the front porch. In some neighborhoods, shopkeepers transact business from behind heavy glass. In others, children have to make “play dates” with playmates in order to do what kids once did naturally, without benefit of a Day Runner. But these days, even toddlers are busy, busy, busy. And the most thriving communities are virtual.

Small wonder people sometimes feel shut off, cut off, anonymous. As if no one sees them, or knows they’re alive. Oftentimes, no one does. In which case, these visions that TV shows offer feel like nothing so much as wish fulfillment, a reflection of yearning. We find on the screen what we often can’t find in life.

But we keep looking.

Earlier this year, the Census Bureau released an interesting statistic. It seems that rootless and restless Americans are actually relocating at a lower rate than at any time in the 50-some years the government has been keeping track.

More and more, we are choosing to stay put. The experts cite a booming economy as the primary reason people tend to move less because they don’t have to chase work.

I can’t argue with that, but I suspect people are also flat-out tired of moving. Tired of being strangers.

Which is why, I suppose, you brave the crowded airport and the ride through godforsaken stretches. For the next few weeks, we will gather to laugh and bicker and reminisce, cry and hug and commiserate, in familiar places with familiar people, with siblings, aunts and cousins, friends and boyfriends, parents, grandparents and like-parents who’ve known us for years but love us anyway.

The most blessed of us that is, those whose families are more functional than dys will wonder why we can’t do this more often. Will feel some piece of self, heretofore missing, snap snugly into place.

And will know that, for once, television has it exactly right.

Sometimes you really do have to go where everybody knows your name.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald.