Last week, TV critic Alan Sepinwall wrote a piece questioning if we're reaching the point where audiences are faced with the prospect of too many quality television shows being aired. Too much good TV? Absurd, I said! No one complains that about too many books, or too many quality movies. Besides, in the current television landscape (where there exist four separate pawn-shop series, where a NASA-founded channel now assigns an entire night of the week to wedding shows, and where a broadcast network at one point devoted 1/3rd of their prime-time line-up to procedurals distingusihed from each other mostly by how they arranged the letters S, C, and I in their titles) we should be delighted at all of the options for well-written TV that we have at our disposal.
But then I thought about how I stopped watching The Americans after the pilot episode. How I have yet to get into Bob's Burgers despite it's critical acclaim and prescence of H. Jon Benjamin. How every new series that gets recommended to me gets added to the end of an ever-increasing mental list. And I realize Sepinwall may be right.
Calling the fact there are so many high-quality series on television right now a "problem" isn't exactly accurate. It's a fact that celebrates the possibilities and variety that can be found in the medium, and TV afficianados should rightly cheer whenever a new great series emerges. However we have finally reached the point where, for the first time, there are so many good shows that it has become impractical for one person to see them all. And that means that TV critics (both amateur and professional) need to accept a few things.
For a long time TV followers have been able to get away with being a completionist lot. There were X number of 'must-see' shows, and for the most part that number was small enough that those who wanted to could stay completely caught up. Now however, that possibility no longer exists. Where before the limited number of channels capped the number of series that aired (with a new show unable to premiere until another was canceled), the growth in original cable programming ensures that more series get made each year, any of which could establish themselves as yet another 'must-see'. At the same time serialized plots have wormed their way into even the most episodic sitcoms, making it harder and harder to skip out on any given episode. Thus, TV fans are now being forced to choose between which series to follow, an experience that's a bit of a rude awakening.
So we're going to have to come to terms with not being able to watch everything. Fine, we'll adapt. Unfortunately even as TV viewers will have to adjust their expectations, certain aspects of current television analysis and fandom punish this approach. The proliferation of internet reviews, many of which review series episode-by-episode, have done wonders for promoting critical discussions about the medium. The most obvious downside however, is that spoilers are everywhere. It has become difficult enough to dodge leaked plot twists for shows you are only a couple of episodes behind on. Yet when it comes to completed series one just hasn't gotten to yet, it's even worse. The conclusion of The Sopranos is already The Sixth Sense of TV endings in terms of ubiquity, and you can bet that when Mad Men ends next year the fate of Don will become equally entrenched in pop culture. I don't believe that being spoiled on certain points is an inherently bad thing (I knew the endings of Se7en, Fight Club, Oldboy, and The Usual Suspects before I saw them and still consider them amongst my favorite films). But it does change the viewing experience, and so people are encouraged to embrace the 'need to see everything now' mindset in order to ensure their sense of surprise.
One other big factor that needs to be acknowledged is that the fan engagement and discussions around certain series really do make them a higher priority to watch "live". In general, a show that focuses on plot and action over character stands to lose as viewers stop pushing themselves to keep up with every series. Lost was a phenomenal series that made its 'as-watched' discussion a big part of its appeal and experience. The trade-off is that its legacy is less clear; a friend of mine who just watched the series remarked that he greatly enjoyed the show, but was saddened that most of the debates and conversations he wanted to have about the show had already occurred years before. Contrast this with series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel, which have less constant narrative momentum but allow new viewers to engage in their own debates and analyses almost a decade after their they ended.
I'm not saying that dodging spoilers or prioritizing plot-heavy shows is the best way to juggle the glut of great series we find ourselves with today. There's no clear answer to how best to watch shows, not one that fits everyone in a medium as personally engaging as television. But these are exactly the issues that audiences must face as TV evolves and expands. It's not just television that is changing; how we watch it is going to have to change too.
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