does anyone else not watch 'shows'

i'm honestly wondering if anyone else on here avoids watching shows or movies entirely. it's not some puritanical thing, i just don't enjoy watching plotted narrative entertainments for the most part. i flat out leave the room when someone else is watching something. they make me feel nervous, like my mind is on a hamster wheel. i don't want to encounter the world these people have created for me, even when it seems fun, because the idea of it makes me feel pressed, tired, like it's a chore i want to avoid. i'm fine with this and don't make it an issue when other people are talking about shows because it's a boring and annoying thing to say. but i'm curious if anyone else has a similar experience?

I don't watch fiction TV series or movies, not because they make me feel nervous, but because I feel that they're a big time sink. Especially those TV detective series that some people seem to inhale the box sets of - like don't they realise that a lot of these are the same plotlines that have been recycled over and over again since the 1930s?

I wish some of our posters didn’t watch shows

The discourse around TV has gotten so annoying/oppressive/lame that I've basically stopped watching all TV shows except Curb, I Think You Should Leave and Joe Bob Briggs. Movies are great, watch movies.

Also I find that so many modern TV series seem to be written around cool set pieces that make for good trailers (or YouTube clips) surrounded by a load of bumbling around.

Especially those TV detective series that some people seem to inhale the box sets of - like don't they realise that a lot of these are the same plotlines that have been recycled over and over again since the 1930s?

my tolerance for scripted tv is at an all-time low to an extent, despite there being a supposed wealth of options. i do watch a decent amount but find myself getting really bored by the narratives and conventions which maybe seemed refreshing 15 years ago but now are recycled to diminishing returns. if there's something unusual about a show, or a good hook, or the quality really is genuinely superior, i'll maybe stick around. MAYBE.

movies generally continue to rule, plus there's just such a deep well from the past to dip into. moreso than with TV, obv.

I admire opting out, and I have friends who just can't deal with the artificiality of televisual narrative or whatever, and friends who just read at night.

But tbh I only watch shows when eating dinner with my wife at the end of the night, and it's mostly so we don't have to watch each other eat. And it's a nice wind-down bonding thing, no binging involved. Although it does feel increasingly difficult to find well-written shows, we're not trash tv people.

Watching more movies always seems like a nice idea but most movies are worse than series these days.

xp lol

I don't really watch any modern shows, have a few older comfort favourites that I like to have on when I'm doing other stuff. Don't think I'm particularly against the concept of shows it's just I play a lot of video games and I like movies and there's only so many hours in yr life

whiney otm about tv discourse, assuming maybe he's talking about recap culture to an extent.

It's possible that intensive online discourse about culture always kinda spoils it sorry ilx I don't mean youse

IRL convos at work about TV shows are the fucking worst.

Posted this on another site but

It really bums me out how "What are you WATCHING? What are you BINGING?!?!?!" has become the placeholder in conversation when people used to just talk about the weather or sports. All the academic stuff nerds used to understand movies and music in the 90s has been embraced by the populace at large and is used to turn consumption of these lame shows as the baseline for someone's political views. Everything is pandering, everything is fan service. I think the "I don't even OWN a TV" guys in the 90s might have been onto something, sadly

my w1fe was talking the other day about w/the wealth of TV options, everyone she knows has five shows they recommend to her and they're all different, and they're all saying "oh you have to watch this and tell me what you think", and it's this weird overwhelming feeling.

I've started to get show fatigue, mostly from watching too many.

I can understand the aversion to scripted narratives. It's foreign to my experience, but brains work in different ways. One of my college friends discovered that both he and his sister -- her much more pronouncedly -- had aphantasia. She didn't read fiction at all, mostly because the lack of visualization left her feeling she was just reading descriptions of things that weren't real.

I feel like I've gotten that way about reading long-form nonfiction because I lean to the other end of the spectrum and I'd rather read shorter things that describe a specific event if I'm not going to be fleshing out this fictional world with my mind.

there are too many damn shows, though

I agree, as much as I like & watch shows, I hate it as a conversation topic. Like, it's fine if everyone's seen White Lotus and it comes up naturally, or it can be fun to analyze something right after watching it (the old 'going out after a movie' vibe). But I try to avoid ever saying "so, what are you watching" or "seen anything good lately?" with friends, so boring.

xp

even movies though, which i agree are great! never actually watch them though. i feel kinda guilty about it, like i should watch more, experience more excellent craft or w/e, but i'd just rather stare into space or post random shit on the internet. there's something about the commitment, or i think it's sitting down for a long time. also maybe adhd.

i didn't want to neg on shows itt but i guess that's fine, who cares lol

Personally can’t relate (😎) but you tend to get that kind of chat from people with nothing much to say. It’s as annoying as any other kind of small talk placeholder and they should be viewed with compassion.

tbf my least favorite part of talking about movies or tv is when people miss obvious or major plot details. we all do that on occasion, the human brain just isn't meant to always pick up everything, but some people are repeat offenders.

the second least favorite part is people arguing about things that are obviously left ambiguous in a narrative. not discussing the nuances of what it would mean if the events went one way or the other, but strongly insisting that their interpretation is correct. let the world have some ambiguity

imo the world needs more people staring into space anyway and I'm glad you're here for us

The series-long story arc that modern shows have almost uniformly saddled themselves with is generally a negative imo, for all sorts of reasons beyond the improved enjoyability of just being able to watch a contained 50 minute story with familiar characters. I think the pressure of the arc and the relentless chat it generates probably makes the standards of writing worse on balance

I do watch shows & movies, though I agree with the sentiment that the quality level has dropped despite the glut, and I would like to watch less. I also feel a bit queasy when the "what are you watching?" convo starts.

But I'm curious, map, do you enjoy plotted fictional narratives in non-video forms? (e.g., novels) Or do you generally avoid fictional media? Do you play video games? What about documentaries or sports?

I mention the latter because a friend once told me the reason he likes watching sports on TV (which I have almost never done with regularity) is that unlike narrative TV it's totally unpredictable. I think that's arguable — someone always wins the game at the end in US sports, there's obvs a circumscribed range of events & outcomes — but it stuck with me as an explanation

xps - I don't think you'll find many, if any, ilxors who entirely avoid scripted fictional movies and television, both. The number of ilxors has dwindled to a fairly small number, so your sample size is against you.

I'm mainly a consumer of fictional narrative in the form of books or movies. Although now and then I might spend a few idle moments watching a snippet of a television 'show', it's very rare, and I need to be feeling very aimless indeed.

i loooove talking about the weather. of course i learned a long time ago it's small talk for everyone else. but if i'm like seeking comfort in an interaction i'll talk about it for a little bit too long haha.

there's something to what map is saying that i get though which maybe is just wanting to intentionally remove yourself from devoting your mind to thinking about the lives of these people who don't exist, or be invested in and stressed about things that don't actually happen, and it's a stress or feeling that you don't get in the same way when reading a book. and for me at least it's also different from watching a movie, where there's a limited time-sink and when it's over, it's over. they're not gonna "grey's anatomy" tar or no country for old men.

sorry map not trying to put words in your mouth of course, just watercooling here about TV shows

ha omar yes that's totally part of it for me.

Ts: people who watch a lot of shows or films but need to be spoonfed basic plot points vs people who watch shows and no films

Personally I’m usually this guy, but only for map-type reasons! It takes me a while to decide on stuff and I usually don’t watch that much in a week, like a couple of hours.

Don’t ask me if I’ve seen a movie cause I haven’t

— Triston Casas (@mvptc37) July 23, 2022

I feel like a lot of online discourse is the show-ification of human interaction and maybe that impulse comes from being used to having narratives presented to you in show format

then again, people have always been gossipy about their neighbors

i loooove talking about the weather. of course i learned a long time ago it's small talk for everyone else. but if i'm like seeking comfort in an interaction i'll talk about it for a little bit too long haha.

― ꙮ (map), Wednesday, March 8, 2023 3:41 PM (three minutes ago)

I used to feel guilty about bringing up the weather as it was really drilled into me that only terminally dull people do that (not by my parents though, they love talking about it). But then weather got super dramatic!

imo the world needs more people staring into space anyway and I'm glad you're here for us

But I'm curious, map, do you enjoy plotted fictional narratives in non-video forms? (e.g., novels) Or do you generally avoid fictional media? Do you play video games? What about documentaries or sports?

I mention the latter because a friend once told me the reason he likes watching sports on TV (which I have almost never done with regularity) is that unlike narrative TV it's totally unpredictable. I think that's arguable — someone always wins the game at the end in US sports, there's obvs a circumscribed range of events & outcomes — but it stuck with me as an explanation

that's a good question! i do like novels but i'm really picky and don't end up finishing very much. the novels that work for me are ones where the plot maybe isn't as central. i guess generally that's easier to do in a novel than a tv show.

i never watch sports but when i encounter baseball at a bar or something i can get into it. i can see how the unpredictability would be refreshing.

anyway it's nice to hear about & be reminded of everyone's different preferences, just scrolling thru socials you can get the feeling that you're the weird one.

xp lol i wish

alfalfa is made entirely for laying down in iirc

I... just lose any degree of caring for a show after awhile.

I started watching "Better Call Saul" with my wife. It's a good show! I got to the end of one of the seasons, and I don't know. Just stopped giving a shit.

Has nothing to do with the quality of the shows. A lot of the new ones look like a lot of fun! But sitting down and sitting through an entire 54 minutes about some make-believe people -- yes, it feels very weird to be put out by it!

By the way, I replayed all the Dr. Dre missions solo this weekend in GTA Online and made $2 million because it's a x2 week for agency missions.

I'm an infrequent show watcher - now that the ex is out of my life, I don't think I've turned the TV on in two months

I have it on a cart that I wheel into a closet and cover with a cloth, so it's not a big part of my space and subsequently don't think too much about it

Wait I do have a buddy's Criterion login info so I'll sometimes watch movies on that - but even that has been awhile

as far as video games go, i've played the same game over and over on my laptop (it's called 'deathstate') for two years now and nothing else.

Prestige TV started out okay 25 years ago, now everything is prestige. Just give me garbage.

I feel like the only time I've ever seen Big Bang Theory is when I'm in a taqueria waiting for my order

Tv hasn’t been good since that show with Adrian Pasdar where he lived in a box inside his luxury apartment and was in love with his sister or stepmother or something

It’s funny I almost mentioned better call Saul, I recognize it’s objectively a “quality show” but I find it really tough going. I find it predictable in its narrative unpredictable-ness, somehow. And the Vince Gilligan house style was for me kind of wearying and stultifying after awhile.

I recognize I’m way in the minority there. I’ll probably finish it at some point in 2027.

no, I know a number of people who got a case of fatigue with that show!

I tried with BCS and made it a couple seasons in. Then tried again watching with my wife and we tapped out at about the same point.

"I started watching "Better Call Saul" with my wife. It's a good show! I got to the end of one of the seasons, and I don't know. Just stopped giving a shit."

I don't think I finished a show since Breaking Bad. Last couple of years I've watched bits of Better Call Saul, BoJack, Ricky & Morty. I re-watched a couple of seasons of Seinfeld. There was some amazing Japanese cartoon thing from the 90s that I got recommended on ilx slack, whose EPs are on YT. All good stuff but I just lose the will to go on.

Mostly it's because I feel at the point I get the concept I find I just don't care about spending another few hours with it. And it could be a lot of hours.

I don't see a big novel or finding a poet in those terms, if I tune into the writing. Nothing beats that experience. A film is a more boxed in experience. You are usually done after a couple of hours.

during the pandemic I watched the first two seasons of twin peaks + the first few episodes of ozark (?) but in general, nope, I don’t watch shows.

I tried watching the wire in 2007 but could t understand what anyone was saying or what was going on #dumb

i keep it simple

- jeopardy
- cbs sunday morning/60mins
- real housewives
- rupaul

THATS IT

I extremely relate to your op, map, especially with the advent of huge flatscreens and booming subs it’s like the corniness and awfulness and anxiety-inducing cringe aspects of this stuff are amplified and mainlined straight into my amygdala

I was excited about the 2nd season of Undone on Amazon but was sort of underwhelmed and didn't finish it.. it kinda lacked the weird magic of the first season

a number of my friends don't like anything with cringe-inducing humor and I could see generalizing that to nearly all shows if you think about it. you can't have scripted drama without the anxiety of human behavior

Shows, TV, streaming services, and podcasts have all pretty much dropped out of my regular media consumption. Youtube and Twitch streams have taken over the function of low-effort distraction/decompression. I watch one or two movies a week, but I try to see them in the cinema as much as possible.

I did watch Twin Peaks a little while ago so there are exceptions here and there.

tvs at the gym all have that smartmotion setting turned on - can't even look at them without wanting to barf

Which is more basic -- only watching prestige shows that are funny, well-written, and well-acted, or trash reality shows? The answer may surprise you.

a number of my friends don't like anything with cringe-inducing humor and I could see generalizing that to nearly all shows if you think about it. you can't have scripted drama without the anxiety of human behavior

― mh, Wednesday, March 8, 2023 9:24 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

definitely can't with cringe-inducing humor either. i can take like 15 seconds of any tim heidecker thing i've tried to watch. if you think about it though, not all human behavior is anxiety driven! i generally like creators that emphasize things like comfort and security in their work. almodovar comes to mind. things just kind of happen and people react like people to them. what happens isn't so much driven by the tension of individual actors in competition all the damn time.

I don't really watch any but I keep trying tbh. People will say "this is really good" and I'll watch four or five episodes. Unlike yall my issue isn't "movies are good" it's books, there isn't gonna be a tv series that's better than any of the literally thousands of books in my house that I haven't gotten to yet. still I keep trying and occasionally I'll get the narcotizing pleasure/engagement axis that keeps people coming back. I watched the whole first season of Bel Air after watching a few out of curiosity on an international flight. It was kind of bad, a lot of the time, but entertaining enough. the second season started weeks ago but I don't know if I really wanna resume that investment, it's not like I actually care. OTOH the way they dealt with the existential threat to the lead after lots of suspense was completely hilarious, and this is what I ~do~ enjoy about this stuff -- the writers are good at putting stuff onscreen that keeps a lot of people interested, but as writers they have such a different set of priorities than people writing books or movies or plays. That's interesting to me. Not interesting enough to have watched any shows in a month or two though.

Having said all that I kinda wanna see Tulsa King but I don't actually know what network it's on or whatever and even Googling that feels like more investment than I wanna put in, my time is better spent posting too-long answers to ilx questions

Which is more basic -- only watching prestige shows that are funny, well-written, and well-acted, or trash reality shows? The answer may surprise you.

dont know dont care, but for some reason seeing a 90 day fiance scripted storyline reminds me less of a room full of annoying 20-something comedy writers hired from twitter than say an episode of the new party down does

I don't watch shows (Exception: Heartstoppers last spring). I'm watching more movies than ever. At night I read or on YouTube watch random stuff like Wu-Tang videos and G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero episodes.

"I don't really watch any but I keep trying tbh."

Kind of my attitude, except if a thing is 60 hours. Though I do want to see The Sopranos. I use to watch it when things were broadcast week in week out, once a week. Then dropped out for some life reason. Funnily enough I did see the very last scene on YT a few months ago lol. Be good to know how they all got there!

seeing a 90 day fiance scripted storyline reminds me less of a room full of annoying 20-something comedy writers hired from twitter than say an episode of the new party down does

I get it, but reality tv makes me way more hyper-conscious of how artificial and staged everything is, compared to the illusion of real human behavior that takes way more effort to create.

i'm way way more of a movies person than a TV person. the time commitment just doesn't work for me with most of these.

also, because the internet tangentially exposes you to everything you could potentially be watching, or everything that people you like are telling you is good, you end up with this total quantity of "must-watch" stuff which just can't be fit into the kind of life i actually want to have. it feels like two or three times the amount embodied in all those old "the average American watches x hours of TV a day" stats. you'd have to start watching TV halfway through work and never stop until bed.

he time commitment just doesn't work for me with most of these.

I have friends who love shows precisely b/c they can chill with a bowl and watch for several nights. The few times I watch a show I have to binge -- I don't want to spend days treating it like a Britisher did Trollope.

honestly, just like with music, I have content overload. It was easier for me to pick what movie or album I wanted to listen to in an era where I had to pick the physical thing up and manually press play, as my choices were more limited. ergo, less chance of me getting ten minutes in and going "ehh no fuck this" and changing my mind.

nowadays, I look for a movie or tv show to watch, and if I'm in the mood for something specific, I find like, 3.5 million examples of it, whereas if I went to Blockbuster in the 90s, I maybe found 3 or 4 and then it was easier for me to make a selection. some nights I've started three different shows or movies only to think "hmm maybe I"d rather be watching <other thing> instead". and then I watch nothing.

I have a whole collection of shows I got five eps into and forgot about thanks to the streaming era.

and as far as zeitgeisty stuff, I'm not one of those "anti-trend" assholes, but I usually opt to jump on those bandwagons later because I won't be as affected by unreasonably high expectations thanks to everybody at the water-cooler talking about how "godly" it is, and likewise I won't inadvertently activate the annoying guy at a party who only wants to talk about this show and nothing else for two hours.

as you can tell 'decision-making' right now is a thing I don't like doing, as well as engaging with strangers and drinking from water-coolers

I used to say a lot of this stuff on ILX years ago but I gave up because everybody else (on ILX and the world at large) genuinely seemed to be into devoting a large part of their existence on planet Earth to watching 25 seasons-worth of some television show.

I sold my XBox One a few years ago because I felt actual anxiety of sitting in place doing the same thing for hours on end and being unable to extricate myself, and I feel the same way about TV, where I can't seem to watch more than two eps in one sitting, so any show that lasted more than like 4 seasons, and it already feels like a non-starter, but I did it with BAbylon 5 so

@Neanderthal - totally. i have uncovered whole new depths of my own anxiety in the form of the analysis paralysis wrought by streaming watchlists. spending 15 minutes clicking around only to ultimately watch nothing is a familiar experience. something I'm trying to work on.

some nights I've started three different shows or movies only to think "hmm maybe I"d rather be watching <other thing> instead". and then I watch nothing.

this is me^^^^^

I do watch shows but not many, maybe not enough (given how relatively many subs I have) Since having to commute again I've often felt too tired to do much but watch TV after dinner but I probably only spend a third of that watching new (to me) shows, a third rewatching stuff I like (this increased in recent years hmmm interesting) and a third watching youtubes on TV

I barely ever watch any shows or movies anymore - I think a lot of the reasons have already been stated. Huge time sink (I have kids and a demanding job), low reward. I feel like on-demand TV is well past its golden age now, and there's this problem where the formula of making a *good enough* show has been perfected, while making a genuinely brilliant show has little reward because it will get lost in the content sea. Every time I start something, I'm like "this is good enough. This is fine. I enjoy it enough, but enough isn't enough," i.e. I'm not going to take time I could be doing other things to watch something pretty good. Plus the long tail of content means the odds you'll be watching something one of your friends is watching at the same time and be able to discuss it with them has gotten much lower, so that's another reward gone.

The most I got into watching a show in the last couple years was watching old episodes of Billions, which still unfortunately descended into *good enough* after a while - at first I really enjoyed the lead performances and the subject matter, but after a while the writing got pretty hokey and the entire premise stopped making any sense to me.

The last time I was genuinely excited about television was when I watched the Sopranos (very late) several years ago.

The last time I watched anything that felt genuinely fresh was Squid Game, but I also couldn't stand watching it and didn't finish. I have too much stress in my life to watch stressful tv.

"Dude, you haven't watched <show dujour>? You have to watch it, it's not at all what you think, you should really check it out - the writing is SO GOOD omg..."

I have this conversation at least once a week in some form or another

Having said all that I kinda wanna see Tulsa King but I don't actually know what network it's on

This bonkers show is on Paramount+ and relatively short. Nothing in it makes any sense but Stallone seems like he's having fun

Getting immersed in a long narrative show can be great, but I think fantasy and horror books and comics mostly scratch that itch for me, and usually make me feel better afterwards than watching a show.

I think the ability to watch things on demand was a boon for a while in that you could make a concerted effort to watch a specific thing that appealed to you and shut off the tv, but it's been ruined by too much crap

just paying half-attention to broadcast tv that has commercials so you can wander off or let your mind wander seems like a refreshing novelty

I feel like on-demand TV is well past its golden age now, and there's this problem where the formula of making a *good enough* show has been perfected, while making a genuinely brilliant show has little reward because it will get lost in the content sea.

^man alive otm here

Also to mention something maybe obvious, I feel like I burned out on TV during the more locked down years of the pandemic (which were pretty locked down here in Quebec).

I watch one or two shows at a time (currently: The Last Of Us, Snowfall) because I can give them an hour a week. I recently watched the first season of Fringe — which was something like 20 or 21 fucking episodes! — but I only did one episode a day. Other than that, I mostly watch violent action movies, often in languages I don't speak. It takes a genuine effort for me to watch a movie that's supposed to make me think, or care about things.

I wish there were more story-of-the-week, in-and-out shows not about cops. Everything is fucking serialized now.

I generally watch one long episode series and one short 4-5 nights a week but I'm usually also on my phone reading/looking stuff up at the same time. Post-golden age pretty much all my favorites are comedies (or comedy-adjacent), they're more interested in the characters than meeting pseudo-prestige checkmarks.

Film and TV are pretty far below books and music in terms of how rewarding they feel at the end, like a just-okay genre novel leaves as much mental impact as the Sopranos.

I happily enjoy my Star Wars/Marvel show fixes (pretty much everything) plus Trek (half of the new series) and of course Poker Face. But honestly in terms of what show/franchise as such I actually watch regularly on a weekly basis is all the iterations of Drag Race here and elsewhere, plus oodles of the secondary stuff/unofficial recaps etc. Needless to say I balance this off with watching things like the entirety of The Human Condition the other week, which was pretty stellar.

thread has clearly touched on something a lot of people are feeling! following w/interest.

yeah the most interesting thing to me about all this is actually how common the feeling seems to be

it sounds more to me like most posters do watch shows but are getting burned out on them?

Another question for the non-watchers - what do you all do while eating dinner?

Dinner is a GREAT time for shorter YT things that I follow. Trixie Mattel's channel, for instance, I usually watch her latest on Mondays over dinner.

Think about Tom Moulton remixes

we always eat when Jeopardy is on, like clockwork.

i usually just insult the players

Another question for the non-watchers - what do you all do while eating dinner?

I read articles off a laptop while eating, or watch short ( >15 minutes) YouTube videos.

Another question for the non-watchers - what do you all do while eating dinner?

This isn’t exactly what you asked, but -

I have a really hard time committing to television shows, regardless of cast or subject. It’s easier to do it with movies - with something that’s just 90 minutes to three hours, then I’m done.

A show could go on for hours and hours!

(I’m not sure when I started feeling this way, sometime in the last couple years.)

the other thing that put me off a bit was the really tedious argument about spoilers. I mean, I must have a really specifically curated feed as I've maybe seen *one* person post an obnoxious spoiler on social media in like 17 years, and he did it on purpose to be an asshole, but the sheer amount of posting people do about people posting spoilers makes me think elsewhere, people are just like...transcribing TV Shows as they watch them or something?

I got tired of reading about it not because I disagree (I never post spoiler details on social media, usually just PM people that I know have seen things), but because people started redefining what spoiler meant. a bunch of people got upset at my friend and I for posting variants of "OMG, can't believe what happened in that episode" after an episode of Wandavision, because it 'mentally prepared them that something big was coming' ergo it was a spoiler, and then another friend said "yeah and reaction spoilers are spoilers too, like when you talk about how much you loved or didn't like the episode, like, just don't post it at all!", and then I was done ever talking about it again.

yet people will post play by play details of sports and nobody cares because everybody assumes nobody is taping a sporting event to watch it later (I try it sometimes but it never works)

what do you all do while eating dinner?

six nights a week we talk. On Sunday nights we eat leftovers and read the newspaper.

I have a really hard time committing to television shows

I did enjoy del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities for this reason... I really appreciate anthology shows, or stand-alone episodes (like early X-Files)

Another question for the non-watchers - what do you all do while eating dinner?

― change display name (Jordan),

Drink wine.

And contemplate the void?

i.e. network television

dinner is for one thing only, stuffing my face

you talk about your day, Jerry!

Yeah I guess the "not wanting to watch your partner eat" thing is specific to my marriage, we have happy hour before dinner every night to talk.

I am single, so I have my wine + dinner and watch, as I am now, The Year of Living Dangerously.

“ Another question for the non-watchers - what do you all do while eating dinner?”

1. Read
2. Listen to music
3. Listen to podcasts

I’ve kinda been feeling much more satisfied by the overseas shows I’ve watched. Maybe it’s the slightly askew feeling, the differing cultural conventions I have to get used to that keep me on my toes, the varying paces…like the reward I get from a swiftly paced Law and Order/The Shield hybrid like Engrenages (aka Spiral) from France is far beyond anything I’ve received from any recent American cop show by far. And something like Stranger (a slowly paced Korean cop and judiciary thriller series w/Bae Doona among others) is just fascinating because you are really just thrown into this complex and murky world in Seoul that maybe is as easily understandable to Korean audiences as Law and Order is to us, but you have to truly learn on the fly as an American viewer. My tv exhaustion probably really mostly comes from just the laziness of a lot of shows these days, which may exist elsewhere but at least I’m not familiar with other countries’ forms of lazy tv.

About the only time I don't feel massively indecisive is martial arts cinema. I p much will have a varying degree of good time no matter what is on, though I do have my preferences obv

3. Listen to podcasts

Podcasts much more than TV are the thing that absolutely baffles me. Don't know how anyone makes it through a single episode of one, never mind listens to multiple podcasts on a regular basis. I just find the whole thing completely incomprehensible. (And yes, I put together 70 or so episodes of a podcast myself, but they were just interviews with musicians, framed by a minimal intro and conclusion. No co-host, no "investigation" or dramatization of anything, etc.)

lol same

love this thread! i am at 0 shows, few video games, and what i look at is usually baseball games or movies

i don't think it'll always be this way, and i always hope to add more film to the mix

i like movies so very very much. my favorite television shows have almost always been 30 min episode anime series (revolutionary girl utena is the greatest work of art of the ‘90s) and the simpsons, that’s what i really think tv is for, not long movies. still i am enjoying the last of us like a hypocrite

ha yes rn I am watching either artsy Criterion Channel shit or old eps of Futurama

been watching The Critic as I get ready for bed last two nights. comfort food.

This Toto performance from 79 is better than 95 % of the shows out there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RcO0hMHQNQ

the theme tune for the critic is really good

it STINKS

(sorry, had to)

you can always just do nothing else while eating. it’s a joy to, if you do it right. it’s also not-wrong to just kind of take in your surroundings if in a public place

fwiw if you don’t want to watch your partner eat, don’t sit across from each other if possible!

I always thought couples who sit on one side of a booth in restaurants were doing it differently but if you have a preference to not watching each other that works well

one of my tables sat on the same side of the booth, which was extremely cramped as it was a very tiny two-top, but it was cos she was giving him a handjob in the seat because they were the only table in the restaurant at 11 am.

they apparently didn't expect the hostess to walk by at any point. oops.

it's simple - if the food is really good, we don't talk.

on the serious side, I feel like the "pitch your dark gritty reboot" thread fits in here somehow

ITT media fatigue

honestly the one thing I never get tired of is documentaries, mostly because I don't feel pressured to watch them all in one sitting

but fuck a documentary series that's 4-8 episodes andhave maybe 2 episodes worth of content.

I watch a bunch of shows but pretty much none of them are anything anyone else is watching (Poker Face is the incredibly rare exception atm). Like I'm watching a bunch of early-to-mid '60s shows now alongside films from the same era. I enjoy kinda acclimating to a particular time/vibe (did a similar hard focus thing with the '88-'90 era last fall, it was fun). My guiding principle wrt consuming media is generally 'how little of a fuck will literally any other human give about what I'm doing right now?' It's panned out very nicely for me thus far.

the only place to eat is on the couch facing the tv, so I feel the decision has already been made for us (by us)

Best thread ever.

I live alone and NEED to have the television on when I'm eating dinner by myself. If I haven't heard the news yet I'll put on world news, otherwise it's brainless sitcoms i've seen a million times. I just need to hear voices. I'm not really paying attention.

This is tangential, disregard if you want:
I also sleep with a half a dozen radios and television sets turned on like Roky Erickson. I can't fall asleep otherwise. The idea is to get a bunch of voices talking over each other, either in a languages I can't understand or at an unintelligible volume. And over that, I'll have a couple of devices playing variations of 'rain on attic skylight with heavy thunderstorm', and I'll turn those up pretty loud. It's a delicate balance and I have to get it just so. Absolutely no music of any kind because it holds my attention and keeps me awake.

That is what televisions are for in my house. They are basically premium white noise machines. What I hardly ever do is sit on the couch watching television because the feeling that I'm frittering my life away makes me uncomfortably restless.

Now, i LOVE movies, I love going to movie theaters but i also love watching them at home (and certain tv shows like Eerie Indiana). I need to have some ceremony around it, though. Usually watching a movie at home means borrowing a DVD from the library, building an amazing blanket fort and filling it with stuffed animals and christmas lights, making fresh popcorn or setting up a tea tray with leftover Halloween candy, and playing the movie on an old laptop on the floor. The really good thing about the blanket fort is, once I get myself situated, it's pretty difficult to get up so I typically don't budge until the movie is over.

just wanting to intentionally remove yourself from devoting your mind to thinking about the lives of these people who don't exist, or be invested in and stressed about things that don't actually happen, and it's a stress or feeling that you don't get in the same way when reading a book.

lol this is exactly why i only read nonfiction but i don't have this problem with movies at all.

I do watch a lot of Youtube! Unintentional ASMR and those videos where someone walks silently through a neighborhood in tokyo, etc. And old cartoons on b98.tv

Youtube is my television, really.

Yep, I don't watch as many shows or movies as I did when I was a teen or in my early 20s. I have tried on many occasions, but I always get genuinely bored or the plot lines go down some uninteresting paths for me. This actually started happening some time in my mid-20s. My friend would joke that he would know if I liked a movie if, when we went to a theatre, I would fall asleep or not. I've fallen asleep many times, to the point where he would say ask, "Are you gonna have a good sleep?" every time we would go to the movies.

At one point I started going to watch horror movies just to see if it'd make a difference. It did nothing. Slept right through all the suspenseful, bloody parts. But i also watch horror movies as comedies, because I find them unintentionally funny.

I've probably watched thousands of movies and shows, though, so I feel fulfilled and have my favourites and that is the end of that. I have another friend who has also watched a lot of movies and shows and it's crazy how good he is at guessing what will happen next in a lot of movies and shows. I have a pretty good idea but he always seems to be spot on, which is wild to me.

These days, I focus on my own hobbies that are not related to "entertainment" (movies, shows, video games, YouTube). I usually watch YouTube to learn about something or to watch people build stuff or run scientific experiments, so mostly non-fiction videos.

Another thing I wanted to mention that is somewhat related: I've noticed I rarely daydream anymore, whereas when I was in my teens and early 20s, I used to daydream a lot. I don't even remember the last time I daydreamed in the last three or four years. I now find people who daydream at all a bit interesting in a "How do you do that?" kind of way. I do have a creative outlet, because I work in tech, so it's not a case of not having any imagination, I just reserve that energy for my hobbies.

I've mostly stopped watching tv and movies, reading and listening to music. I prefer to spend my free time doing volunteer work in my community.

I still daydream, just not with quite the same intensity as before. I’m shocked that I still do, though.

I know people have no use for Chuck Klosterman, but in “The Nineties” he has a bit about (paraphrasing because I’m nowhere near my copy right now) how people watched television, in that decade and before, “because it was on”.

And I’ve had this conversation with other people before, and you probably have too, but I’m kinda gobsmacked when considering the hours upon hours of awful or mediocre TV I watched growing up, just because. Just because! Things like children’s programming and cartoons don’t count in my mind, but like, The Love Boat? Melrose Place?

I can only assume that these things were watched because they were there, but it wasn’t like I didn’t have books to read, or other activities.

movies and baseball games used to be the same way for most people, you’d just go cause it was on. my dad talks about showing up halfway through the movie because it wouldn’t occur to anyone to find out when it actually started. they’d repeat it immediately after rewinding the film so he’d watch until he saw something he remembered, and then get up to leave. “this is where i came in.”

I can remember doing that the 70s (and 80s, I think). It gues sit wasn't such a financial commitment in those days

I could be wrong but I feel like there might have been ways of finding out when films started before the internet.

not important enough to plan your whole day around though, i guess.

Ever since I saw the tagline of Vertigo ("You SHOULD see it from the beginning") I've been intrigued about people like Tracer's dad.

https://i.imgur.com/DFnHgyP.jpg

I mainly watch oddball comedy stuff when it comes around like The Rehearsal, Joe Pera..., How to with John Wilson, Paul T. Goldman, etc. The early promise of prestige TV exemplified by The Sopranos or Deadwood turned out to be false; those were more products of brilliant showrunners who cut their teeth on older-style TV dramas. I don't need to sink my time into some spotty hour-long drama or, the other problem afflicting entertainment, shows self-consciously written with social media in mind. Even something like Poker Face doesn't pass the smell test for me yet. When I see people on Twitter are wherever insisting Natasha Lyonne is the new Peter Falk it feels astroturfed to me. And when they go on and on about Fleabag or Succession, forget it.

Two shows I can think of that I do like are Barry and The White Lotus. The former is mainly because I like Mike White generally and feel like he got a raw deal with the brilliant Enlightened. Plus, he's said that as long as he throws a dead body in the first few minutes of each season HBO allows him pretty much to do whatever he wants with it. Barry has also gone some really interesting places as it increasingly becomes a showcase for Bill Hader as a director, which makes it something of a rarity in TV, especially a half-hour show.

At dinner time in our current small apartment, my wife generally looks for something on YouTube to watch, or I listen to one of my audiobooks or something while I eat.

*I meant "the latter," RE: White Lotus.

I don't really watch TV or movies, but it's not really a conscious choice on my part, I just can't be bothered and there's never anything good on TV

I should further add I'm also fine with watching YouTube during dinner, but her algorithms seems more fine-tuned than mine. I mainly get the same On Cinema and band recommendations over and over when I log in.

the other problem afflicting entertainment, shows self-consciously written with social media in mind

I hear this critique a lot but have never thought this while watching something and funnily enough, the show I've heard this about the most is probably The White Lotus. Frankly it feels like an easy, impossible to prove or disprove criticism to lob at shows you don't like

given that social media will clearly fixate on anything, because it is social, it feels like a null argument

https://i.ibb.co/t2WWyPC/lean-ham.gif

I've mostly stopped watching tv and movies, reading and listening to music. I prefer to spend my free time doing volunteer work in my community.

― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 9 March 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Underrated posting.

been watching The Critic as I get ready for bed last two nights. comfort food.

― hootenanny-soundtracking clusterfucks about milking cows (Neanderthal), Wednesday, March 8, 2023 8:00 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I rewatched these a few years ago and honestly it's nearly as funny as classic Simpsons. same style of humor at least. no surprise since a lot of the same people worked on it.

people watched television, in that decade and before, “because it was on”.

as opposed to the sophisticated and mindful lifestyle of today?

I see what you’re saying, but the point (again, I don’t have the book to hand) might have been about a) the nature of the television available at the time and b) the variety of entertainment/diversions available then as opposed to now.

There only were three TV channels in the UK in the 70s, 4 in the 80s.

My whole family would gather 'round the television on Thursdays to watch Cosby-Family Ties-Cheers-Night Court back-to-back-to-back. My step-dad would even stick around for Hill Street Blues.

Now, my family of four may as well live in a dormitory. We each watch separate shows on separate devices in separate rooms. Or we're playing games. Or lookin' at the internet.

We do get together for dinner a few times a week, which is a lot more than we did when I was a kid and ALF was about to come on.

This thread is full of great stuff but is already tl;dr until the weekend or at least the wee wee hours. Think there is a general question about relating to the arts: the social aspect, the time commitment, the barrier to entry etc.

the other problem afflicting entertainment, shows self-consciously written with social media in mind

I hear this critique a lot but have never thought this while watching something and funnily enough, the show I've heard this about the most is probably The White Lotus. Frankly it feels like an easy, impossible to prove or disprove criticism to lob at shows you don't like

I can see why you'd say that, but I think while I think White is conscious of what social media reaction will be when writing TWL, it still attempts to observe the characters honestly, and they're the type of characters where social media and technology -- and really, discussions like this whole thread -- would simply be part of their lives. A bigger offender to me is stuff I see clips of from Netflix, but then Netflix is a big offender in a lot of ways.

Back when TV was watched because it was on I would scour the listings -in the newspaper, my dad would never spent money on TV Guide, he considered it an extravagance, so I only see it when visiting friends or relatives or on the checkout line- and watch all kinds of stuff but later on would narrow it down to a few favorites in syndication that I (along with my then-unknown to me future friend Dr. Morbius) would watch over and over and memorize. Nowadays I try and sometimes succeed to watch some of today's must-see TV and sometimes even watch with the rest of the Redd family, but often simply can't keep up with their greater capacity and bandwith for binge-watching.

I've thought that when watching Brooklyn Nine Nine, the show is edited so tightly and the plots are mostly incoherent to the point where it seems like they're just trying to come up with viral bits. which to be fair did work a few times

Arrested Development was kind of like this too, not on purpose though obviously.

otoh there's I Think You Should Leave which to me sounds written specifically for a certain corner of Twitter. every single sketch seems like it could be based off a dril tweet.

We occasionally have family movie night. When my daughter picks the film, it's always one that she's already watched.

"Don't you want to watch something you haven't seen already?" "No."

The viewing of a season's worth of shows all at once, and then going back and re-watching them all over again is baffling to me.

I mentioned upthread those GTA Dr. Dre missions. There were like 13 of them that you had to do to get to the final scene where Dre gives you a solemn nod of respect from his helicopter, you give him an understanding nod back and then Bam! $2 million in your account. Took me about two hours to get to that point. I was so proud of myself!

And then I go online, and people are talking about how they've run through the missions four or five times this week. How you can save time by taking your own car instead of Dre's to the studio. How don't bother with the silent approach and sweep the floors of the nightclub like a janitor, but just go in guns a'blazin'.

I sound like an old man (I'm still younger than Dre though), but where's the fun in any of that?

I think most of us are old enough to have lived through the prestige era--from DVD box sets of the Sopranos and the Wire and BSG to million post threads about Lost and GoT to Mad Men/Breaking Bad/Succession worship to endless memes of The Office/Parks & Rec/Community/ITYSL. At some point this kind of peters out. Every now and then there's something cool like Severance, but mostly it's just the new "Everyone died what happens now" shows.

honestly i think our new resolution is that when we feel the urge to watch something and can't decide what, just pick any Mad Max movie besides Thunderdome and then you're set. no matter if you just watched it two days ago.

here's one that has probably already been discussed on ilx, but what about the phenomenon of people irl occasionally subconsciously changing their behavior to be more like television shows? i guess i'm thinking mainly of the practice of people irl not laughing out loud at funny things (like the characters on the comedies, laugh track or not, who do not laugh out loud at funny things)

it's also possible that some people just don't like to laugh or break a smile, even when hilarious things are happening. and of course it's extremely possible that the things that i am laughing at and find to be humorous are judged to be not funny at all by other people, which explains the deadpan reaction.

but perhaps there are other examples. there did seem to be a period at the end of the Friends-era when some people just starting acting like that asshole Chandler, emulating his way of going about life ("could this cup of coffee BE any more watered down?" *blank expression as the laugh track of the mind fills up the gap*)

tl;dr i liked andy's description upthread of their television on a cart, wheeled into the closet with a cloth draped over it

There's definitely a ton of trash shows covered by thin veneer of competence these days, as people have been saying. But in defense of shows, there's a Venn diagram that covers the type of show that my wife & I usually watch together that involves 1) some sense of humor 2) decent writing & acting 3) characters acting like humans, and it's surprising that we're always able to find *something* that doesn't make us feel like our brains are rotting.

We have very few fiction shows that appeal to both of us, but we are lucky to have Only Connect and University Challenge on a Monday night on BBC 2, which we both really like. And quite a few comedies. I wonder if it's because I grew up in a Seventies/Eighties house with siblings who were also really into television, that I like to watch things other people are watching. It gives me something to talk about with other people. Back in the days before I worked from home, I used to watch the soaps and even football so I'd be able to join in conversations with other people. Now I find it a bit lonely if I'm watching something and I'm the only person who's into it.

That said, I will not watch Love Island or Made in Chelsea or any of those "structured reality" shows. If I'm going to the trouble of watching your programme, you better have at least written a script. Or gotten into drag. One or the other.

Yes, watching TV with other people and commenting on the programme you're watching is great fun.

I watch essentially zero TV shows except live sports, my wife only watches a few, and we struggle to find things we can watch together. During the early months of the pandemic we made a concerted effort with Battlestar Galactica but neither of us could hang with it beyond the first few episodes of S2. It doesn't help that she leans toward comedies and reality shows and I lean toward crime and horror. We have the same problem with movies, so we spend a lot of time reading and our nice big home theater system stays off for much of the year.

My wife and I joke that we're fucking up the Netflix algorithm for each other; she watches depressing social realist dramas from South America or movies about European teenagers having romantic crises, and I watch hyper-violent action trash.

my mother in law has the tv on most of the time as background or whatever and when we visit I actually do enjoy waking up to the sound of like The Waltons or Gunsmoke from the living room. The gentleness is something else, even with shows about dudes with guns

Yeah, when I'm in the house on my own for long periods, I like to have the TV on with films or fictional TV shows (the very kinds of shows a lot of people in this thread are saying they don't like or find boring). I find the fictional nature of them soothing. They are not real people with real opinions, so I don't really have to listen to them. If it's something I've seen before, I know exactly what's going to happen, and I can pay attention to the bits I like and otherwise just let it burble away in the background. I guess most people would use music or podcasts to fill this silence, but I don't really want to listen to it, I just want it to be audible.

Not fictional TV shows, real TV shows that are fiction. You know what I mean.

That weird phenomenon of message boards, particularly one where people are constantly saying there are only 4 people left, where there are television threads where it feels like *everyone* is watching all the telly all the time saying shit like 'it gets good in season 12!' and I have no sense of how there is so much time available in the world for people to fill. Then you step into the next room where no one is watching anything at all and I feel like my brain is going to pop.

It would be good for someone from the 'I'll three-screen any old shit on x1.5 speed' thread to come in and provide some clarity/balance.

My whole family would gather 'round the television on Thursdays to watch Cosby-Family Ties-Cheers-Night Court back-to-back-to-back. My step-dad would even stick around for Hill Street Blues.

pplains, your family was mine. well, except for the stepdad. hill street blues eventually gave way to LA Law i think right? i forget the timeline. I was always a fan of Miami Vice Fridays. if nothing else, my childhood viewing habits made me well aware of Markie Post and Sheena Easton.

I feel like on-demand TV is well past its golden age now, and there's this problem where the formula of making a *good enough* show has been perfected, while making a genuinely brilliant show has little reward because it will get lost in the content sea. Every time I start something, I'm like "this is good enough. This is fine. I enjoy it enough, but enough isn't enough," i.e. I'm not going to take time I could be doing other things to watch something pretty good. Plus the long tail of content means the odds you'll be watching something one of your friends is watching at the same time and be able to discuss it with them has gotten much lower, so that's another reward gone.

this is otm, i think there are so many shows where they've found that formula and just shifted it over to a different location with a different cast and slightly different tone, and it's usually more on the feel-bad spectrum of narratives, where few escape alive. it's sort of exhausting. i think the most refreshing US shows i've seen have been the ones which veer away from the usual hooks a lot of the prestige era shows had and subsequent copycats ran into the ground. faves for me are Succession, Severance, Reservation Dogs, Andor, the Rehearsal, Poker Face...

The last prestige show I got into was The Bear last year, and that was for two three reasons: it was on a streaming service I was already paying for, the episodes are short, and it's really fucking good.

Most stuff on TV I'm just like, I can't be bothered to sign up for yet another streaming service (or bug my friend for their login), and I'd rather be playing video games anyway.

I was very invested in Lost when it started but by the end it was so disappointing that it made me regret caring in the first place. So I thought it would be a better idea not to get caught up in hyped new series until they’d finished without jumping the shark.

As a result I never got round to watching Breaking Bad, despite the fact it’s highly acclaimed, because I feel I have no desire to start watching something that’s over 100 hours long, especially not if I’ve seen gifs of random scenes out of context

This thread reminds me of the Scharpling/Wurster bit from over 10 years ago, with Wurster's character watching a 100-DVD box set of all of CBS News with Walter Cronkite in order.

would watch

I mostly watch shows to see what music is used in them, and how -- if I hear buzz about "____ was used in ____!" then I'll check out the show. Severance had easily the most surprising (and effective) I've seen in years, and the ending to the season finale of Poker Face delivered. But if there's no chance whatsoever for a surprising or just generally killer music cue, I probably won't watch the show (which is the main reason I have no interest in The Last Of Us -- I'm sure it's a fine show, but it's not like a Jackie Shane song is gonna pop up in the soundtrack).

So many new and bizarre perspectives in this thread

the last of us has several good music cues especially in the acclaimed third episode

The thread is literally titled after a banging musical cue in the first episode!

I was very invested in Lost when it started but by the end it was so disappointing that it made me regret caring in the first place. So I thought it would be a better idea not to get caught up in hyped new series until they’d finished without jumping the shark.

As a result I never got round to watching Breaking Bad, despite the fact it’s highly acclaimed, because I feel I have no desire to start watching something that’s over 100 hours long, especially not if I’ve seen gifs of random scenes out of context

― I am using your worlds, Thursday, March 9, 2023 11:47 AM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm kind of the same way, a lot of shows I really liked I wound up disliking in the later seasons, but still felt obligated to watch because I'd already come this far. Breaking Bad I did get into though and I can say it was unequivocally worth it. I like how they don't even build up to the show's premise, by the end of the first episode he's already cooking meth with Jesse and getting himself into lots of trouble. And it really does get better as it goes on, in fact those last few seasons of Better Call Saul are probably the best TV I've ever watched. But yea it is super long so I get why you wouldn't wanna bother

I was always a fan of Miami Vice Fridays.

See, omar, I could tell you didn't have a stepdad from this one sentence. I always had to miss Miami Vice because it came on after my dad had picked us up on Friday night for the weekend.

“My whole family would gather 'round the television on Thursdays to watch Cosby-Family Ties-Cheers-Night Court back-to-back-to-back. My step-dad would even stick around for Hill Street Blues.

pplains, your family was mine. well, except for the stepdad. hill street blues eventually gave way to LA Law i think right? i forget the timeline. I was always a fan of Miami Vice Fridays. if nothing else, my childhood viewing habits made me well aware of Markie Post and Sheena Easton.”

YOU GUYS. My family did this (and not just Thursday nights- Mom and did the Saturday night Golden Girls/Empty Nest/whatever block over pizza)

we're gonna have a TV party tonight
all right!

i think one basic dividing line in tv watching is whether your interest is increased or decreased by realizing that there are 72 hour length episodes in the series

I get that TV is supposed to be an escape, and it doesn't stop me from watching, but any series supposedly set in contemporary America without even a token masked extra makes me think about the pandemic MORE, not less.

I also want Jeopardy contestants sequestered in separate remote cubicles and represented by Max Headroom-style CCTVs stacked on top of their respective podiums, and I also want Mayim Bialik replaced with the animated cat from the Paula Abdul video.

I sometimes have patronizing tinfoil Clive Barker ideas that certain popular television actually makes people feel emotionally “bad” but because it’s makes them feel “something” it gets interpreted as “good” and then compulsive watching follows

TS: Shows v. Stories

Bring back cheaply-made daily soaps!

haven't read whole thread yet, just really otm here—

I’m kinda gobsmacked when considering the hours upon hours of awful or mediocre TV I watched growing up, just because. Just because! Things like children’s programming and cartoons don’t count in my mind, but like, The Love Boat? Melrose Place?

― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, March 9, 2023 4:02 AM

i loved the seinfeld episode where it comes to light that jerry and the gang are all huge melrose place watchers. that really made a lightbulb in my brain come on and i remember thinking "a show about nothing referenced by a show about nothing."

like a lot of people my age, i grew up with tvs just around. and on. always on. when i was able to pick what was on, i liked simpsons or basketball. that never really changed but i always have preferred music. when i was able to have my own place, i never wanted a tv and haven't had one for over 15 years now. lost interest in simpsons, but kept up with futurama and that's really the only show that i've ever been at a _FANDOM_ level with.

(and the only reason i like it is because of how absolutely preposterous everything is)

while i have watched some other shows over the years, it's mostly been because something is music-related. i did something very rare and marathon`d atlanta last year for the finale, but other than that, i can't remember the last "new" show i watched. when i lived with a partner, they did like to marathon shows regularly, but more for the sake of having background chatter.

with movies, idk. i've never all the way liked them, be it at the theater or on the couch. certainly have had some enjoyable experiences, but now more than ever, i have to be aware of my ptsd/mental health stuff and sometimes movies are just not the healthy choice. the last time i was in a theater was for jurassic world. before that, dark knight. i have still never seen the dark knight rises. oh well. movies just aren't that important.

(and besides, isn't dark knight rises basically the same length as listening to mama's gun twice? i'd much rather do that.)

also no, i've never even seen five minutes of a single episode of game of thrones, the office, or breaking bad.

(not bragging, just making it very clear how little i care about "SHOWS")

Bring back cheaply-made daily soaps!

these still exist, no?

i think there's several hundred hours minimum of shows id enjoy favourited on the ahem service i use and i just dont want to watch any of it a lot of the time.

if the humour takes i can do a few weeks and catch a few seasons of something but its rarer than id like that mood of concentration hits me

lots of good posts itt about why this might be, personally i always find being overwhelmed by the mental overhead of choice leaves me questioning the commitment. its very similar to my love life that way nb this isnt true.

tl;dr i liked andy's description upthread of their television on a cart, wheeled into the closet with a cloth draped over it

I too liked this, and am wondering also if they keep their telephone under a bell jar.

lol

time to use the radio
*unties the ribbon*

is pornography shows

hey siri

That weird phenomenon of message boards, particularly one where people are constantly saying there are only 4 people left, where there are television threads where it feels like *everyone* is watching all the telly all the time saying shit like 'it gets good in season 12!' and I have no sense of how there is so much time available in the world for people to fill. Then you step into the next room where no one is watching anything at all and I feel like my brain is going to pop.

― Shard-borne Beatles with their drowsy hums (Chinaski), Thursday, March 9, 2023

haha yes :)

https://i.imgur.com/9gxcmzL.jpg

don’t talk to me about things i don’t already know about, i don’t wanna hear it

oh c'mon, it fits here

Honestly I’m sick of hearing about shows

Shows are the new podcasts

I always said I would buy the box set after it was over.

I sometimes did, but then managed to never watch it and it's still waiting. Maybe when I'm retired.

Lol since my posts itt I've actually watched two series to completion

I go for long stretches without watching shows, then something will catch my attention and I'll dive down the rabbit hole headfirst.

TV is a comfort thing for me so if i’m sick or hung over or tired i’ll put on Trek or Simpson or Blackadder cos it’s just there, i don’t have to concentrate. So for years i pretty much never watched tv, just a few dvds and youtube. my current partner though ughhh he is obsessed with bingeing tv and always talking me into things i “gotta see” like the wire/the sopranos/etc lately he’s on me to watch Last of Us and i just don’t CARE,god i just slogged my way thru all of deep space 9 and that took
six months. i have a job and housework to to!? i don’t have time and the time i do have is for video games. still, somehow the tv goes on anyway and next thing I know I’ve seen all of Endeavor, Poker Face and Severance by osmosis somehow.
… not sure what my point was there really. I’m visiting my folks interstate this weekend and woke up this morning to a TV blasting away and no one watching it or even in the next room listening. wtf.

shows suck ass

my current partner though ughhh he is obsessed with bingeing tv and always talking me into things i “gotta see” like the wire/the sopranos/etc lately he’s on me to watch Last of Us and i just don’t CARE,god

dump his ass, Trayce

One of my best memories of adolescence is watching "MASH" every night in reruns with my mother and brother. The final episode can still bring me to tears if I just think about it.

“so, are you watching any good shows?” is the modern “how about this weather?” It signals that the social event is over. Conversation topics are exhausted.

I do watch certain shows, but am not into the communal way of watching them popular today.

There's a channel/free streaming app called Comet that shows hours of Outer Limits, Buffy and the X-Files every day, where was this shit when I had sick days from school. I had to rewatch the 6 X-Files episodes we had on VHS over and over and over.

shows suck ass

― flopson, Saturday, April 22, 2023 1:55 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

You take that back about WKRP In Cincinnati!

I think I'm just kinda generally wiped out by the insistence to share the same experience as other people, TV shows are a big offender here but also certain movies and records*** (much less so fortunately, except here lol) and live theater, like "have you seen Hamilton??" was maybe the question I've heard the most over the past decade. And it usually becomes this pressure where you're expected to go along with liking something.

***Probably why after awhile I started to dislike random access memories more than I might have otherwise, everyone telling me this pretty okay hodgepodge was the greatest album of all time.

I loved The Wire… and yeah, it’s possibly my favorite show, but I cringe around people who, when TV comes up, tell everyone who hasn’t seen it that it’s the best show ever made. It’s always a certain sort of dude, too.

shows suck ass

― flopson, Saturday, April 22, 2023 1:55 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

Shows
How many of us watch them?

I watched Beef cuz wanted to be a part of the conversation man that show sucks ass

The reason I don't like show discussions is the average uninteresting person only wants to talk plot points, plot points, plot points, but steer the convo to themes, symbolism, and characters and they get bored and take it back to plot plot plot. I know what happened, I saw the show!

So you admit that you watch shows

OH NO

Shows

Why are they so bad & hated

I saw a show today oh, boy

So ya

Thought ya

Might like ta

Binge-watch a show

To feel the warm thrill of confusion

That space cadet glow

Pink isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel

To binge on Season 4 of "The Handmaid's Tale"

i watched lorirocks777's new train ride video by "team france" last night, it's a good one, kinda trippy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEVs8M0sYto

Maybe the thread title should be "does anyone watch 'shows'?"

Umm... I guess I do watch 'shows' but not in some sort of bingey quasi-religious way. I have to actually be interested in the premise of the show, you know?
Video games now take up more of my sofa time than before. When I had a partner I used to watch a lot more TV and films, but I don't love watching films on my own unless I'm at the cinema for some reason.
I was berated by Facebook friends recently for having let Succession pass me by. I started watching it and I admit, it is brilliant and I am enjoying it a lot.
So, yay, 'shows'

Umm... I guess I do watch 'shows' but not in some sort of bingey quasi-religious way. I have to actually be interested in the premise of the show, you know?
Video games now take up more of my sofa time than before. When I had a partner I used to watch a lot more TV and films, but I don't love watching films on my own unless I'm at the cinema for some reason.
I was berated by Facebook friends recently for having let Succession pass me by. I started watching it and I admit, it is brilliant and I am enjoying it a lot.
So, yay, 'shows'

I watch shows because I like learning about new things and also just being straight-up entertained. I have no problem not telling you about it.

still not watching 'shows'

Do you listen to radio plays?

no

I definitely don’t watch “shows” and aside from a few comfort examples I know very well (Ghibli for instance) I don’t watch fictional films either. I tend to struggle with narratives, so when reading it’s hard to deal with any fiction longer than say 150 pages. The television I do watch will tend to be formulaic things like Traitors but even that, which I do enjoy when it’s on, I will really only watch with my partner. As per map’s OP I absolutely will leave the room when she’s watching something I don’t want to see.

The other thing I do like watching is tournament football, like the World Cup or the Euros, but I will mute or turn off any aspect of the coverage beyond the game itself. I cannot stand to watch punditry.

the last 'shows' I watched were probably the first seasons of Black Mirror & Stranger Things, and the rotoscoped show 'Undone'

so it's been a few years

I asked because I could well understand the visual aspect of tv and movies to be something someone might not be into. Do you read fiction? Or is storytelling in general just not your thing?

xposts

the shows i'm watching now

Slow Horses (rewatch)
Small Prophets

i have a dozen shows in my "continue watching" list across various streaming services and i will probably never finish them. basically a good way to get me to never watch a show probably remains telling me i have to watch that show.

I am somewhat looking forward to the Twilight Zone reboot, mostly because I really like the anthology format with standalone episodes and not some lengthy story arc where episodes have to be watched in order to make any sense. Like the old X-Files 'freak of the week' vs. the later grand conspiracy

I gotta admit, I love shows. Only good shows though.

i watch a decent amount of tv anime but other than that i much prefer games and movies to "shows"

i think like furtho mentions i might have a problem with fiction. novels can be difficult for me to get through, especially plot-heavy ones, and i tend to go more for either poetic meditation or documentary-style presentation. i always feel like with 'shows' they're asking me out of the gate to recognize their neat little system as 'reality'. the less i watch shows the more jarring even a little exposure is, it's especially apparent how much the reality a show presents is about grooming (sorry i'm sure there's a better term) the watcher to be a consumer. it grosses me out.

As per map’s OP I absolutely will leave the room when she’s watching something I don’t want to see.

haha i was staying in a motel last week with my partner and our friend. it became apparent that the friend wanted to do that thing most normal people do and switch on the tv in the motel room. he did and i went outside. (my partner likes tv just fine so he stayed inside.) which would have been all well and good but there was this other guy, probably the owner of the motel, a few hundred feet away in front of the motel running a weedeater. and then a leafblower. for 90 minutes, until the very edge of dark. brrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnn. in one of the quietest places in the lower 48. for all the motel guests to enjoy. exactly the kind of sound i fuckin drove all the way down from the city to escape. but going back in the room .. absolutely not. nuclear waste zone. until i did finally go back in because it was getting dark and cold, and i made a stink and found my earplugs.

I am not currently watching shows, except some old Doctor Who (it's bad).

normally i will have a comfort thing that i cycle through again and again. right now it's Columbo. previously it was Star Trek TNG. before that it was Dr. Katz. to map's point about grooming consumers, i think for me there's something about older shows that gives you some distance from the whole milieu / consumerist matrix that relieves the ickiness somewhat, a bit like looking at old advertisements and you're almost charmed by the way things used to be even though i'm sure for certain people at the time the feeling of "the world has gone insane, please rescue me from the rapacious claws of the marketing industrial complex" was quite real, just as it is now.

i feel somewhat put off by the implication that you have to constantly be stuffing all these new shows into your face or else you're not participating in the culture, but on the other hand i try to have a sense of humor about it, and luckily have found it easy to embrace my persona of "old fogey" for as long as i can remember, i guess since high school. even if in other ways, for me more vital ways, i do feel au courant.

what i like about the old shows that i do watch is the feeling of dipping into a familiar world, with familiar patterns, sets, voices, etc. i don't particularly want to be challenged or horrified or puzzled by TV.

It's a little sad, but participating in the culture is kinda what I want to avoid! The more discourse there is around a tv show, record, book, whatever, the less inclined I am to check it out, I don't need twenty opinions in my head crowding out my attempt to engage with the material. So I curate myself a diet of stuff - old radio dramas, bollywood, 70's yakuza films, dusty old novels - that I am unlikely to find any opinions on unless I go searching.

This is perhaps somewhat misanthropic and certainly not likely to help me find new and exciting things being done today but hey, we're all just trying to get through the day.

I tried pétanque today and might get into that, you can play dozens of rounds in the time it takes to watch one prestige tv episode.

i relate to not wanting to participate in the culture. also to leaning into "old fogey" (or "old maid") as a personality. it's funny to want to do loner things and then try to relate to other people about it on the internet.

i'm at the gym a lot and outside on trails, definitely something i want to keep doing, though today i'm a little sick and taking a rest from exercising and remembering all the different ways that time can be spent.

yeah part of me feels like watching even a prestige TV show still carries an air of waiting-to-die, just wasted time... like I have little projects I should be working on or finishing that book I started four years ago. I don't feel that way for anyone but myself, however

I also think the U.S. has a problem with just running shows into the ground... like the original The Office had an actual trajectory with a planned ending, while the U.S. version was just like 'What do we try now? Add another character?' If the ratings are okay, they just keep going forever, long after losing what made the first couple seasons special

one of my big memories of the 00s is the experience being at social gatherings and people going apoplectic at the idea that i wasnt watching one of the Big Important Shows, inevitably saying some version of "you're missing the BEST SHOW ON TV RIGHT NOW", as if that alone would be enough to make me drop my glass and rush to the nearest streaming device.

I dont necessarily mind participating in the culture per se - its fun when something that I like & would have watched anyway becomes a cultural moment, because I like talking about things that I like with other people. But the idea of investing 30-70 hours into watching a TV show just to "be part of the conversation" is psychotic behavior imho.

Thankfully I do feel like that's dying down now, or maybe I've just gotten better at ignoring.

my mom always thought fiction was pointless and bullshit. "why would waste my time watching make-believe?"

all while the TV was always on with the other shows - game shows, talk shows, sports shows, news shows, cooking shows, garden shows, home shows, reality shows, etc ad nauseum

xp there's also just too much shit to absorb; years ago it was like The Wire or Sopranos or Madmen, now there's like sixty show you absolutely must see

(as I have an old The Bob Newhart Show on at the mo)

people definitely used to get a lot more fired up about it. there was a lot of energy in the culture back then around the idea that it was very groundbreaking and unprecedented that "sophisticated" TV dramas for grownups were popular (which was baffling to me, since thats pretty much been the case for the entirety of US TV history)

I have no more patience for this world of man. All I’ve wanted to watch lately is Golden Girls.

been thinking about going on a st. elsewhere binge

speaking of prestige tv

I have an apparently inexhaustible appetite for history documentaries where Mary Beard or Simon Schama or somebody tells you why a dusty something is seismically significant. Christopher Clark, Alice Roberts, doesn't matter, I just let their voices lap over me for comfort. Have I seen this one? Dunno. Cuneiform, the spice trade, the Renaissance, doesn't matter.

But then my wife tells me about a new highly regarded "show" and I'm like meh. Can't muster the mental energy for a show right now.

people do seem chiller about recommending "shows" nowadays. might be because there are too many shows and everyone understands no one can conceivably watch even the ones that are supposed to be pretty good. might be because my frienda are 10-15 years older than they were 10-15 years ago, and have just mellowed out in general.

A good friend of mine is always recommending me shows..and its always some Amazon Prime slop, stuff like Bosch ("its not amazing or anything but Im really into it")

Shows are generally terrible now, Im sorry. I'll check out DTF St. Louis at some point (maybe).

But the idea of investing 30-70 hours into watching a TV show just to "be part of the conversation" is psychotic behavior imho.

I was telling the kid about how whereas Succession had something like what 40 episodes, all of those network shows that ran for 7-8 seasons have hundreds each. And we had to schedule our lives around them. He thinks my generation was absolutely insane. Moreso after explaining the concept of “will they or won’t they”.

Xpost Last year I went back and got into prime prestige shows I missed out first time around. Deadwood and The Shield, fuck yeah. Ok maybe The Shield isnt proper "prestige tv" but what a show.

I don't feel like there are as many "shows" vying for my attwntion as there used to be. Every so often I'll subscribe to a specific streaming channel so I can bingewatch Succession or Severance or Pluribus or some other prestige show with a single-word multisyllabic title, then cancel my subscription after a week. But there really isn't much I am desperate to see, and a lot of stuff that does get put in front of me, like endless Game Of Thrones and LOTR spin offs, look like incredibly naff money spinners

Following the discussion in the “things you just don’t care about” thread, shows went from a kind omnipresent background element in my childhood and adolescence, to a something I liked a lot but was selective about in my teens and 20s, to something I, well, just don’t care about in my 30s.

At this point, it feels like watching shows is a distraction from life, rather than something that adds to it. TV discourse, and just talking about shows in general, is something I have no interest in. Watching my coworkers talk passionately at length about the fine points of dozens of reality tv shows is something that, while I get how and why it’s absorbing, is just not something I’d rather do than sleep or clean my apartment.

otm. sometimes i do get a weird feeling, like a little moment of self awareness, when watching tv, like i’m just pissing into a corner, or an old person in a retirement home who can’t find someone to play cards with.

many novels aren’t so different though. i just finished an ian mcewan novel and i was like.. i could have been raking leaves.

it’s all so relative. a show like “The Studio” would have been a miracle of television and talked about endlessly if it had aired in like 2013.

I'm watching S1 of X-Files for the first time since it's original run, which has been fun. Other than that mostly watch movies on Criterion.

Sometimes I get the idea that watching shows or movies at home is like watching stuff on an airplane: I’m doing it because I’m stuck in a cramped, uncomfortable space - an experience I want to be over ASAP - and it’s the easiest way to make the time go by faster. Except here the proverbial plane ride is my life.

many novels aren’t so different though. i just finished an ian mcewan novel and i was like.. i could have been raking leaves.

this is an interesting point. I don't read as many novels as I used to, but I think I would read more if I felt like there were more "must-read" novels that "everyone" was talking about. maybe i just don't spend enough time in spaces where people are talking about novels, but it feels like that sort of thing is increasingly rare. at least as far as literary fiction goes. Sally Rooney is the only author I read as soon as she publishes a new book, and it's partly because each new book of hers feels like an event.

with TV, there is certainly a lot of stuff these days that feels inessential, even among shows that are "prestige" products with big stars (a lot of Apple shows are like this). but there are still a handful of shows each year that generate cultural discourse, and that's often what prompts me to watch them. for instance, I don't think I would've watched The Pitt if I hadn't seen people talking about how good it was. (of course, I may be more tuned into these conversations than others bc of the specific people I follow online, podcasts I listen to, etc.)

i just finished an ian mcewan novel and i was like.. i could have been raking leaves.

I feel like the "what am I doing" effect was much stronger in the old days of TV, where you could really find yourself plopped down and just watching any old shit for hours on end. If there's an advantage to streaming it's that you have to actively choose to watch something.

I do feel like I'm always verge of not having any more shows worth watching, but there's usually something (although we're rotating streaming services more frequently now to find it). And there's always more Taskmaster, thank god.

It's harder with contemporary novels, for sure.

For the non-shows people -- what do you do while eating dinner?

I stopped watching shows and movies during the pandemic. Especially dramas, everything just seemed like stress and conflict that I didn't need in my life at that time. I never went back to it.

? While eating dinner my wife and I face each other screenlessly and talk.

But since the children have grown we don't do a proper sit-down every night. We still roughly alternatw cooking, but one night in three or four is scrounging or leftovers or takeout or some other asynchronous thing.

The couple in the movie "About Last Night" - Rob Lowe and Demi Moore - have a thing where two nights a week he cooks, two nights a week he cooks, they go put two nights, and then there's "sandwich night."

The line provides the setup for a crass sexual joke later in the movie, and my wife and I sometimes drily speak of "sandwich night."

I stopped watching shows and movies during the pandemic

there was this overlooked sci-fi/cold war drama called 'Counterpart' that I thought was pretty interesting and well made but nobody watched it because it was on Starz, I guess. Anyway there's a whole pandemic subplot with fake TV commercials about keeping your distance and wearing masks and it was freaky because the show was made in... 2017

Yeah, my wife and I have a no telly during dinner rule. It's a nice little time to debrief about the day and stuff.

Sadly not all TV shows are good.

Ok fair, we sit down and talk before making dinner every night. That's mainly because my wife prefers not to watch people eating when possible, but also because watching a good show while eating good food at the end of the day is an incomparable pleasure. I certainly wouldn't be working on music or raking leaves during that time.

one of my big memories of the 00s is the experience being at social gatherings and people going apoplectic at the idea that i wasnt watching one of the Big Important Shows, inevitably saying some version of "you're missing the BEST SHOW ON TV RIGHT NOW", as if that alone would be enough to make me drop my glass and rush to the nearest streaming device.

not sure how well you’re remembering the ‘00s tbh

xp at Andy - I was one of the Counterpart fans and I think we have posts about it somewhere on the board

[ii'm honestly wondering if anyone else on here avoids watching shows or movies entirely. [/i

omg, pulled me in at the first sentence here, will be interesting to read through this thread. just stating at the beginning that i suddenly stopped watching ALL shows a couple years ago (have been fine with that) and also hardly watching any movies (something i’m more sad about; i love a good movie). also less interest in novels, narrative things, “stories”.

i think a lot of it has to do with my life situation but i’m gonna shaddup and read the thread first. but interesting thread idea!

I was one of the Counterpart fans

ahh good... I remember trying to talk to friends about it and nobody knew what the hell I was talking about

My wife and I no longer have any shows in common. She watches her stuff, I watch my stuff. Sometimes we watch a movie together. During dinner we put a CD on because she likes to listen to Underworld or something similarly high-energy while cooking.

also hardly watching any movies (something i’m more sad about; i love a good movie).

yeah this also describes my feelings about movies. i like the idea of watching a movie. i like reading about movies that i might like. but i never watch anything!

i.. cannot remember the last movie i watched. it may have been over a year at this point!

on the other hand, i have watched, or really 20% watched, many train cab videos on youtube.

on reflection, i don't think there's any single answer to why i stopped watching tv/movies. it's intersectional haha.

for dinner, it's important that my partner spoon the food that he has made into my mouth while i post to ilx. (i'm kidding if that wasn't clear.)

Haven’t read Ian McEwan, but as far as raking leaves goes, one reasons I don’t watch shows is because listening to an audiobook while doing household chores is so much more satisfying

I would read more if I felt like there were more "must-read" novels that "everyone" was talking about.

Funny, I’ve had the opposite experience: I got sick of media “events”. It started to feel like I was going through the motions just to stay in the loop, and the pressure to keep on top of new shows became a deterrent. When I realized Absolutely Nothing would happen if I missed X new show, I lost motivation to be part of the conversation. This has also happened with new music and visual art, which is a more melancholy loss, but with TV (and most media), it can feel like I’m just a machine that consumes content in order to spit out discourse that’s fertilizer for more content.

seems like 'OH MY GOD YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT?? YOU MUST WATCH IT' has gradually morphed into 'Really? You should check it out, you'd probably like it...'

nothing is that essential anymore

I got sick of media “events”. It started to feel like I was going through the motions just to stay in the loop, and the pressure to keep on top of new shows became a deterrent.

This is why I like having a subscription to Apple TV. Other than maybe three or four titles, their shows - and there are a ton - get basically zero publicity and thus zero media coverage, so you can always find some weird thing that you've never even heard of. It may not be any good, but you'll see the little icon on the screen and ask yourself, "When the hell did that come out? And how are there three seasons of it?"

I have no more patience for this world of man. All I’ve wanted to watch lately is Golden Girls.

― Cow_Art, Tuesday, April 7, 2026 6:10 PM (yesterday)

you might like Pluribus lol

I still watch shows but the general level of quality has declined recently IMO and more and more often I'm watching an ep or two and then bailing

I tried watching three different shows that have all received postive remarks from folks on the streaming thread, or on a dedicated spin-off thread for the show and... I guess they're OK? But there's no way I can commit to a seven or thirteen episodes of it when the main arc can be wrapped up in four. Nevertheless, "shows" are forced into "seasons" and midway through episode two I lose interest in the B and C plot superstructure that props it up. Then I feel like I should bail out and watch something on the AFI list I haven't seen or on the Criterion Channel I'm paying for.

I'm aware that it's filmist reactionary talk, but I just can't do it with the look, feel, and relative standardization on how it's all made now.

i think a part of it is the digital everything experience. i'm not like a 'film is better' or 'video is better' guy at all but i think there's something ineffable about the experience of watching those formats that doesn't translate to 'choose something on netflix' at all. i'm not sure it's necessarily all 'endless choice' or whatever. big hypothesis but i think there is something in us that wants to see something a little more direct to the source, materially speaking.

Sign me up as one of the "doesn't watch shows or movies" people, basically. I sometimes give in and watch highly recommended things long after they're over and everyone else has already finished with them: Schitt's Creek & The Good Place are probably the only two shows I've watched all the way through in many years. Otherwise I'll make it through some eps and then get bored.

If I could have anything, it would be more actual companionship in my time at home, someone to talk to, to have more connection and sharing in my days. Like map I feel quite a lot of active antipathy to the tv being on. Definitely will leave the room rather than have my flow of thoughts hijacked by something that demands attention.

Idk it's just not interesting although if I do have to choose some kind of tv it's likely to be an archeological or scientific discovery kind of thing. I don't mind paying PBS even though I never watch it. I should cancel Netflix actually.

more actual companionship in my time at home, someone to talk to, to have more connection and sharing in my days

i hope this comes your way. i bet it will.

I just need a better roommate lol

I watch a new movie or enjoy an old one just about every day; when it's over I watch Unsolved Mysteries or Thundercats episodes.

but I'm also in bed by 9:30 p.m. or earlier if I don't go out.

Coming into this late but I just love shows

I also rarely feel like I HAVE to stick with them; the only one I’ve consistently followed is Doctor Who and that obsession extends back into childhood

I also love plays, movies, musical theater, dance, concerts, basically any iteration of people performing is my shit, I find it invigorating and inspirational

I know upthread I said I was unwillingly being dragged into shows. Which if you saw all the TV threads you'd assume was a blatant lie on my behalf, ha. I still resent the timesink a lot of TV represents. Even though I'll happily waste an entire Actual Day on a video game or book. I cant explain the difference.

but I'm also in bed by 9:30 p.m. or earlier if I don't go out

God I feel heroic if I'm bed by 11pm

can't really get into "good" shows, tv is better when it's trashy imo

more actual companionship in my time at home, someone to talk to, to have more connection and sharing in my days

While it isn't really mutually exclusive to watching TV, I'd trade all the shows in the world for a moderate amount of this.

can't really get into "good" shows, tv is better when it's trashy imo

A lot of the prestige stuff is actually trashy as hell tho, just not marketed as such.

I want the old Game Show Network back, with all the 60s panel shows

I finally got round to watch the last season of Twin Peaks a few months after Lynch died. That's my answer to this question.

Also shows are TV. Films are films.

It's mostly time, so I watch the latter.

The last show I bothered with was State of Play, which was six hours, and that was a near struggle as I think TV shows are far too long, like most films are as well but three hours is shorter than fifty.

I don't watch shows basically because I am too cheap to pay for multiple streaming services and too shy to ask my friends for their logins. I get into maybe one show every 2-4 years. Last one was The Bear before it devolved into self-parody. I am, at least theoretically, a Film Guy. Like others here, I have trouble getting past the mental block of sitting and focusing on a single thing for 90 to 120 mins. I'll often end up watching movies in chunks.