TV & Other Drugs

The year is 2016. Honestly, check your phone. The Sopranos came out in 1999, The Wire came out in 2002, and if you’re sitting there, reading this, and you still haven’t watched either of them, don’t worry.

It’s okay.

I mean, I’ve had the entire boxset of 24 on DVD for about 6 years for some reason. I’ve only ever watched the first season, partly because it’s difficult to enjoy a show that openly advertises the amount of your life you have to sacrifice in order to watch it. ‘The following takes place between the hours of 2:00pm and 3:00pm, during which time you could easily call your mum, do some washing, go for a short jog, and read the synopsis for this episode on Wikipedia.’

The idea of the boxset is quite daunting, with a lot of pressure for us to watch any remotely acclaimed drama or sitcom.  “Have you watched 72 hours of narrative set in the same place about the same characters with variations of the same storyline continuing until the showrunner, network or viewers got sick of it? What do you mean no?”

The idea of the physical boxset is pretty much non-existent now anyway, with streaming services rarely displaying television shows in any sort of box, usually preferring squares in an abstract space. Even boxes are no longer cool.

And the more people that ask you if you’ve watched a boxset of a show, the less you want to actually watch it, because now it’s just revision for a potential conversation/exam, which you already know the correct answer to, but still have to read the textbook anyway.

“Have you seen The Wire?”

“Yes.”

“It’s good isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Correct. You may go.”

The only way to avoid this situation is to jump on board when the shows first air, risking the possibility of watching hours of an absolute drek pile, just so you don’t have to catch up at a later date, and ride on the coat-tails of more insightful viewers than you, taking snippets of opinion from people with too much free time.

So, to save you that time, here’s some primers for how to respond when confronted with the topic of some acclaimed TV shows:

The Sopranos –

DO SAY: “I think that cut to black was to demonstrate the uncertain nature of the gangster lifestyle, the two likely possibilities showing the dichotomy of being both a family man and a criminal.”

DON’T SAY: “They just stole the ending from Inception.”

Breaking Bad –

DO SAY: “Walter White is the perfect anti-hero, his descent into corruption fuelled by his ostensible selflessness just shows us how far we can follow a character into the depths of human evil.”

DON’T SAY: “Of course, if it had been set in England, it would have been one episode long, what with our NHS! Am I right!?”

Arrested Development –

DO SAY: “Mitch Hurwitz subscribes to the comedy archetypes of matriarch, patriarch, carpenter and clown, but the roles are constantly changing, while always staying true to the characters.”

DON’T SAY: “Isn’t that the one where The Fonz plays a lawyer?”

I also blame Netflix for trying to reclaim the word ‘binge’ as a good thing. Bingeing means indulging to excess, not just doing something lovely for a bit until you’ve had enough, it means doing it more than you should, more than is good for you. A bad amount. I don’t think a word associated with eating disorders and alcohol abuse is the best one to use to demonstrate your USP. “Too much telly! More telly than you should really have! Binge on it, consume it until your eyes vomit!”

Remember the days when you’d actually wait a week in between episodes of a TV show, with time to ruminate on the plot points, considering the possibilities of how the story could advance, discuss with your friends? If anything this means serialised television doesn’t need to be as deep or involving, because it doesn’t need to keep you hooked for a whole week of not watching it. For Netflix or Amazon, the next episode is just there, poised beneath your cursor. At least they don’t need to waste five minutes at the start telling you what happened in the previous episode, or waste five minutes at the end, teasing the next episode.

 

Next time on the Bandwagon, if all dogs are male, and all cats are female, then what about snakes?