In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, how is Mildred's television show similar to the conversation between Mildred and Montag?

In Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, conversation between Montag and Mildred is similar to the program she watches on the "parlor walls."

Montag has become accustomed to referring to characters in the television program Mildred watches by their characters' names, as if they were members of the family, as with "Uncle Louis" or "Aunt Maude." Montag comes to despise the very thing that so engages his wife's attention throughout each day. She lives vicariously through the experiences of closely scripted actors on the screen, but when they speak, they say virtually nothing of importance; Mildred is so passively engaged that she cannot even answer questions about what is going on with the characters. She has no idea.

Montag takes a hard look at the programming that is constantly pouring into his living room:

And the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, the nieces, the nephews, that lived in those walls, the gibbering pace of tree apes that said nothing, nothing, nothing and said it loud, loud, loud. [...] What was it all about? Mildred couldn't say. Who was mad at whom? Mildred didn't quite know...

By the end of a particular session, as Montag tries to follow what is happening, the experience leaves him ill:

He came out of the room sweating and on the point of collapse.

This performance of people speaking without a clear exchange of information is much the same way Mildred and Montag interact with one another.

Most of the time that they spend together is at night in the bedroom. Mildred is hooked into the seashell ear buds she wears each night, heavily influenced by medications to help her sleep. She is barely aware that he is there. One night, seemingly without intent, she takes an overdose and Montag has to call for medical assistance to pump her stomach.

Her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their moving shadows, but she felt no shadow. There was only the singing of the thimble-wasps in her tamped-shut ears, and her eyes all glass, and breath going in and out...and her not caring whether it came or went, went or came.

The next day Mildred doesn't remember a thing.

Their relationship is seemingly based upon a distant memory or circumstance that has been lost over time. When Montag asks, Mildred cannot recall how they met. Montag cannot remember either, and he struggles because he believes this detail should be "more important than any other thing in a lifetime..."

When Montag witnesses the death of the old woman at 11 N. Elm Street, he struggles to come to terms with it. It changes him drastically. He wants desperately to understand what it is about books that makes people act as the old woman did. He wants to wipe the memory of that night from his mind. However, Mildred is selfish, caring only for herself and the imaginary people on the television; she has no real connection with any person in her life. When Montag describes the old woman, Mildred exclaims, "She's nothing to me; she shouldn't have had books." When he tries to understand the woman's death, knowing that he and the other firemen were responsible, Mildred notes "It's water under the bridge," and also points out that if he really was disturbed, he "should've thought of that before becoming a fireman." They do not communicate. Nothing about their relationship has any more substance than the lives of the actors on the walls.

Even when Montag asks if Mildred knows anything about Clarisse, who he has not seen in some time, she says that she forgot to tell him—that she thinks Clarisse is dead, and her family has left. Not only did Mildred forget, but she also had known for four days and never told Montag. In this particular discussion, Mildred is on the brink of sleep. This is also how she lives her life...simply on the brink; never truly engaged.

Talking takes place with the parlor walls and their characters and between Montag and his wife; but it is sound more than content. One can understand this would be the case with a television show, but it is sad and tragic that Montag and Mildred are such strangers. Even as he tries to connect with Mildred, she is unwilling. In fact, at the end of the story, it is Mildred who turns Montag in to the authorities, and the firemen (along with a very surprised Montag) show up at their home to burn it and its contents to the ground.