I know there are people who can’t stand to be kept in suspense. They read the first 20 pages of a murder mystery, then skip to the back to see whodunit. They purposefully ignore the first three-and-a-half quarters of a basketball game, then tune in to the last five minutes. They might watch the first episode and last episode of a given television serial season—regarding the middle episodes as just so much detritus.
I am not one of those people.
Except today. Because my editor made me be one.
We reviewed House of Cards this week—Netflix’s first original series and grand entertainment experiment. I watched the first episode, cataloging the nudity and dutifully counting the f-words until the episode was done. It was (aside from the nudity and f-words) an interesting, even compelling show—focusing on the duplicitous, underhanded machinations of a U.S. Congressman and his equally sneaky wife. But I had little intention of ever watching the thing again. There are, after all, roughly seven quintillion shows on television and only one Plugged In reviewer to watch them all. I can’t spend much time dillydallying on one program.
But see, here’s where (at least in part), Netflix’s grand experiment got experimental: Instead of releasing just one episode a week like normal television outlets do, Netflix released all 13 of the season’s episodes at once—allowing impatient viewers to binge watch them all or, if they’re really impatient, skip to the end.
And that’s what my editor asked me to do. Skip to the end. “You can blog about it,” he said.
The result was, predictably, disastrous. Oh, the congressman was still scheming at the end, but he was scheming with a whole host of new people—and some of his fellow schemers in the first episode were plotting against him in the last one. Some characters were new. Others were dead. The congressman’s wife was talking about having children while the congressman himself was breaking rowing machines. (What? He liked rowing?) The only real constant was the restaurant where the congressman ate ribs.
This sort of plot-based whiplash can’t be good for me. It’s a wonder I don’t just sometimes break off in mid-sentence and start talking about something entirely unrelated and muffins.
But as confusing as my experience with House of Cards was, it serves as a microcosm on the confusing nature of television itself these days.
We all know that the world of entertainment is changing. When we listen to music, we tend to bypass the record store and download it online. When we hanker to play a video game, we skip the arcade and install an app.
But these entertainment baubles are still, recognizably, what they’ve always been. Music is music, whether you hear it live or on 8-track or on your iPod. Games are games, regardless of their pixelation level.
But television … that’s something different. What happens when television bypasses television altogether?
Think about it this way: When I was a kid, I’d flip on CBS every Friday night and watch The Dukes of Hazzard. CBS provided just that one slot every week to watch the thing. And if I wasn’t home, I missed the General Lee jumping over that stupid creek for the 270th time.
Things are a bit different these days. Instead of the big three broadcast networks, there are literally hundreds of channels from which to choose. And now other services, not technically networks at all, are getting into the act: DirecTV, a satellite provider, picked up the acclaimed dramas Friday Night Lights and Damages. Hulu, a website that serves as an online clearinghouse for many television shows, has its own batch of original programming. There are scads of Web-based series on YouTube. Even longtime soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live are migrating to the World Wide Web.
This has become pretty confusing, actually. When publishing our House of Cards review, we had a hard time deciding just where to use words like online and television. Because while it looks like a television show, it’s not technically “television” at all.
Or is it? When I review a television show, I rarely actually review it on a television set. I stream it on my computer. When I watch TV for fun, I don’t check the TV guide. I stream it or buy the Blu-ray. (We’re watching Downton Abbey at home now. Just started Season Two. Don’t tell me what happens!)
Netflix is banking that its House of Cards strategy will be what the future of television will look like. Forget tuning into CBS on Fridays, we’ll treat our future “television” shows—tomorrow’s Dukes of Downton—as we might a serialized movie—to be downloaded whenever, wherever and however we wish, to be digested at our leisure.
Now, obviously, many of us have already grown accustomed to this brave, new television world. But for families, all these formats and channels and dispensation avenues can make for a confusing, potentially disturbing, world. You can monitor your family television during primetime hours. But what if little Bobby sneaks off to stream some MA-rated show on the office computer? Or the family iPad? The Netflix app or browser or interface has no idea whether Bobby is 7 or 37. And with Internet-connected screens proliferating in the average home like dandelions, it can be hard for parents to keep track of all of them.
Of course, Plugged In will try to keep you up to speed as much as possible—but this new world of television is difficult for us to keep our pulse on, too. As content continues to proliferate, we’ll run into ever more difficult decisions: Do we review another episode of Amish Mafia or check out an Annoying Orange episode on YouTube? See Good Luck Charlie or let folks know about Trailer Park Boys?
But I can promise you that when we do pick a show, we’ll continue to tell you what’s in it … and why it matters for you to care what’s in it. We’ll keep talking about how to talk to your children about what they’re watching. And how to get a handle on this ever more bewildering landscape we live in.
Oh, and if we do ever find a good televised serial or series to plow through, we’ll caution against skipping right to the end. Scrambles the brain, that does. Muffins.
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