As with all things, my rainy day TV show list just keeps getting longer. At the top of it are Search Party, the last season and a half of Better Things, and the last two seasons of Catastrophe. The last one I knocked off it was Only Murders in the Building, which I burned through in a weekend a couple weeks ago. When I sit down ready to pick something off of the list, there are a couple factors:
1) Is another season coming soon, which would motivate me to catch up in time to join the conversation (hello, Better Things!). This is what got me to finally watch Succession last year.
2) Is it a show that has weirdly long legs, such that it's still getting discussed long after it aired (Only Murders).
3) For a show that I loved but fell off of, am I ready to finish it knowing there will never be more? This is where Catastrophe falls, made even more emotional by the Carrie Fisher element.
4) Vibes. Like, I know I will love Search Party. I like everyone involved in it, every critic I like speaks highly of it. But somehow the vibe is never right for me to watch that show. One of these years. There are a lot of shows that fall into this bucket; especially for ones which already ended and will never end up in category 1 again, there is just always going to be a high bar to finally get to it.
I like this idea that rather than ever actually watching anything, we instead start mentally categorizing it, like organizing the deck chairs on the Titanic. We want to have something at hand for every conceivable situation (or vibe, a critical dimension here), but that doesn't actually move us any closer to watching any of it.
Yeah, that's definitely the case for me. I have a Google Doc for movies to catch up on, in at least 10 different categories. I've stopped myself from doing the same with TV shows, just because the time commitment is so much longer. I would feel much worse looking at a list of 100 shows, each of which would require 20+ hours. Because I know I'll never finish them all. The movies at least feel achievable, even though they aren't actually.
I have been spending less and less time engaging with TV on Twitter (where the urgency is real) and more time in Slack and Discord communities. What this means is that while, sure, there's some element of recentness (Yellowjackets, From, and Severance all benefit from the community buzz), there's actually a pretty big emphasis on going back to those rainy day shows for group watches. I'm currently running through Twin Peaks, Dark, and Justified for the first time thanks to those communities. So I feel a lot less of that pressure anymore! An older show will come around when these communities vote on a new weekly watch.
But there's still too much TV even for those spaces, so I'd say it usually comes down to two questions for me: 1) why am I watching; and 2) who am I watching with. For the why, I guess I think of it in terms of kind of turning off my thinking TV brain vs. starting something new and thinky. It might be like the vibe idea lol. But the inertia of falling into a fourth season of a comfort food sitcom or guilty pleasure drama is the real barrier to getting to those rainy day special gems. For the who, there's some negotiation with my partner, who tends more toward classic sitcom than dark comedy or serious drama. There's also a film studies digital watch group where it has to be something new and worth engaging with week-to-week. I did a LOST rewatch with colleagues that just ended last week. So, there isn't really much time left to make those decisions I suppose lol.
I remember when one of my message board communities was going through a period of turmoil and rebirth, I got linked to a Discord community in order to get an invite to the new forum, and I was like "Oh, people are just gathering here instead, really." And I certainly remember the pre-Twitter days on the TWoP forums, and I can see where that appeal lies, but I also think for me that urgency is a key part of things? But it's also my research, and thus being on the "pulse" carries a certain expectation.
Which is to say that I see all the appeals, but wonder if they're compatible with where I am with all of this.
(Also, is From a real show? It's ungoogleable, and the only way I know it exists is the sponsored tweets from the same account that keep coming into my Twitter feed, despite the fact it was filmed in my home province).
A Slack or Discord (or similar) space can be just as urgent if that's what the community wants. Of course, it's a small group of people instead of the whole world, but with Discord, you can automate bots to pull certain news items or Twitter accounts or RSS feeds or subreddits (etc) into a given channel, emulating the reception of information about TV in a space like Twitter while enabling the specific self-selected group of people to engage. And of course, it's a very easy space in which to coordinate a group watch - especially with the ability to stream via Discord.
I don't think that these spaces totally capture "the pulse" of anywhere close to as broad a group as on Twitter, but it can do a lot of different and useful things can get you close! And I've definitely been appreciative of how they help me visit and revisit older favourites or missed gems. And of course they enable discussion in a way that Twitter does not always - in specific channels for specific topics. Custom emojis, and being able to use them to react to any given comment, also contributes to the creation of a distinctive community culture, which can be a lot of fun too! Reacting with Shannon screaming in the Pilot of LOST is always delightful.
Anyway, as for From - I'm visiting the East Coast this summer, and it turns out it was filmed super close to Halifax, so I'll be driving through just to see if the set is still there. My best recommendation is to Google "From Epix," but also, whoever chose that name made a very big mistake XD. It's really good - extremely LOST vibes, but also horror and intense existential dread.
As with all things, my rainy day TV show list just keeps getting longer. At the top of it are Search Party, the last season and a half of Better Things, and the last two seasons of Catastrophe. The last one I knocked off it was Only Murders in the Building, which I burned through in a weekend a couple weeks ago. When I sit down ready to pick something off of the list, there are a couple factors:
1) Is another season coming soon, which would motivate me to catch up in time to join the conversation (hello, Better Things!). This is what got me to finally watch Succession last year.
2) Is it a show that has weirdly long legs, such that it's still getting discussed long after it aired (Only Murders).
3) For a show that I loved but fell off of, am I ready to finish it knowing there will never be more? This is where Catastrophe falls, made even more emotional by the Carrie Fisher element.
4) Vibes. Like, I know I will love Search Party. I like everyone involved in it, every critic I like speaks highly of it. But somehow the vibe is never right for me to watch that show. One of these years. There are a lot of shows that fall into this bucket; especially for ones which already ended and will never end up in category 1 again, there is just always going to be a high bar to finally get to it.
I like this idea that rather than ever actually watching anything, we instead start mentally categorizing it, like organizing the deck chairs on the Titanic. We want to have something at hand for every conceivable situation (or vibe, a critical dimension here), but that doesn't actually move us any closer to watching any of it.
Yeah, that's definitely the case for me. I have a Google Doc for movies to catch up on, in at least 10 different categories. I've stopped myself from doing the same with TV shows, just because the time commitment is so much longer. I would feel much worse looking at a list of 100 shows, each of which would require 20+ hours. Because I know I'll never finish them all. The movies at least feel achievable, even though they aren't actually.
I have been spending less and less time engaging with TV on Twitter (where the urgency is real) and more time in Slack and Discord communities. What this means is that while, sure, there's some element of recentness (Yellowjackets, From, and Severance all benefit from the community buzz), there's actually a pretty big emphasis on going back to those rainy day shows for group watches. I'm currently running through Twin Peaks, Dark, and Justified for the first time thanks to those communities. So I feel a lot less of that pressure anymore! An older show will come around when these communities vote on a new weekly watch.
But there's still too much TV even for those spaces, so I'd say it usually comes down to two questions for me: 1) why am I watching; and 2) who am I watching with. For the why, I guess I think of it in terms of kind of turning off my thinking TV brain vs. starting something new and thinky. It might be like the vibe idea lol. But the inertia of falling into a fourth season of a comfort food sitcom or guilty pleasure drama is the real barrier to getting to those rainy day special gems. For the who, there's some negotiation with my partner, who tends more toward classic sitcom than dark comedy or serious drama. There's also a film studies digital watch group where it has to be something new and worth engaging with week-to-week. I did a LOST rewatch with colleagues that just ended last week. So, there isn't really much time left to make those decisions I suppose lol.
I remember when one of my message board communities was going through a period of turmoil and rebirth, I got linked to a Discord community in order to get an invite to the new forum, and I was like "Oh, people are just gathering here instead, really." And I certainly remember the pre-Twitter days on the TWoP forums, and I can see where that appeal lies, but I also think for me that urgency is a key part of things? But it's also my research, and thus being on the "pulse" carries a certain expectation.
Which is to say that I see all the appeals, but wonder if they're compatible with where I am with all of this.
(Also, is From a real show? It's ungoogleable, and the only way I know it exists is the sponsored tweets from the same account that keep coming into my Twitter feed, despite the fact it was filmed in my home province).
A Slack or Discord (or similar) space can be just as urgent if that's what the community wants. Of course, it's a small group of people instead of the whole world, but with Discord, you can automate bots to pull certain news items or Twitter accounts or RSS feeds or subreddits (etc) into a given channel, emulating the reception of information about TV in a space like Twitter while enabling the specific self-selected group of people to engage. And of course, it's a very easy space in which to coordinate a group watch - especially with the ability to stream via Discord.
I don't think that these spaces totally capture "the pulse" of anywhere close to as broad a group as on Twitter, but it can do a lot of different and useful things can get you close! And I've definitely been appreciative of how they help me visit and revisit older favourites or missed gems. And of course they enable discussion in a way that Twitter does not always - in specific channels for specific topics. Custom emojis, and being able to use them to react to any given comment, also contributes to the creation of a distinctive community culture, which can be a lot of fun too! Reacting with Shannon screaming in the Pilot of LOST is always delightful.
Anyway, as for From - I'm visiting the East Coast this summer, and it turns out it was filmed super close to Halifax, so I'll be driving through just to see if the set is still there. My best recommendation is to Google "From Epix," but also, whoever chose that name made a very big mistake XD. It's really good - extremely LOST vibes, but also horror and intense existential dread.