People Are Binging Shows Incorrectly, Here's The Right Way
Just trying to save yourself a lot of time.
Spike Eskin is a host of the Rights To Ricky Sanchez. Follow him at @SpikeEskin.
“Too fake, I’m out, I’ll find something else.”
Those were the words I uttered to my wife about six minutes into the first episode of the Netflix series, Away. It’s a show starring Hillary Swank (great actor) as an astronaut who is about to leave her family to go on a mission to Mars (space shows, right up my alley). The first episode started with a press conference in which the astronauts who would go on the mission were just far too witty for my liking. It was too fake. I hated it. I checked out.
It’s not that I have something against sharp wit (I enjoyed Ricky Gervais’ After Life). It’s not like everything I watch has to be totally believable (I loved Wilfred). It’s that I’m always looking for a reason to not be interested, so I don’t invest hours of my life into a show that I don’t like that much. If at any point while watching a TV series I feel like I could be wasting my time, I bail. I’m doing it the right way.
The fact is that there is so much content, so many shows and movies to watch, podcasts to listen to, books to read, that people should be far more choosy about what they binge. My time on this Earth is limited, and I’ll be damned if I lay on my deathbed thinking about all the time I spent on yet another season of The Walking Dead.
Malcolm Gladwell released an episode of Revisionist History that explained to people that hockey teams pull the goalie too late in the game (this is unrelated to his quest to prove that Steve Nash is Nigerian). For them to really get the benefit of the man-advantage, they should pull the goalie sooner. This is what I’m proposing for your serialized entertainment. Pull the goalie before it’s too late. The last thing you need is some sort of money-pit for your attention. Watch something else.
There is simply no reason to watch more than one season of Stranger Things.
I quit Lost during Season 2 because I believed that the reaction of actually seeing other people on the island (The Others) was insane and unbelievable. I saved years of my life.
I quit The Wire after five episodes. Boring. People keep telling me it doesn’t get really good until season three. I’ll check out a recap.
Want to know what will happen on Ozark? Whatever will ensure there’s another season, until viewership wanes to a point where announcing the final season will get them one last pop.
Deadwood? Give me a break. Also too fake. No possible way the old west was like that. I made the mistake of trying to watch it after seeing it on several “best shows” lists. About 30 minutes into some scene in a saloon I knew it wasn’t for me.
One episode into the second season of Orphan Black I decided that there were too many clones. Where is all of this going? I don’t care.
Do you know people kept watching Westworld? A few episodes in I was like “this one guy (Bernard) is definitely a robot,” and went to sleep as my wife continued to watch it every week. Was he a robot? No idea. Who gives a shit?
Sometimes I’ll even bail before I start. I’ve never seen The Sopranos. I don’t really like mob stuff, too fake. I’d rather watch a show about a topic that I find interesting.
We are a nation of people who stick around and watch television shows merely to “find out what happens” instead of whether or not the characters are interesting. I’ve got news for you bub, the people in these shows aren’t real, the stories didn’t actually take place, nothing happened. This is not a good reason to keep watching a television show. If you’re that desperate I can assure you that there is a place on the internet that just tells you what happened.
This obsession with finding out how things end should be for sports. It should be for life. It should be for any activity that isn’t pre-determined. This is why we’re so obsessed with the idea of free will. How interesting would life be if the outcome was predetermined?
My recommendation is to watch shows that are about people like Mad Men or Rectify, rather than about what happens. And more importantly, if you find yourself for even one second thinking it sucks, turn it off.