How Watching Television Became a Chore
11th February 2024
A young woman I know broke it off with a young man after three dates but declared that it was a pretty successful relationship anyway. “He showed me a couple of great Amazon Prime series,” she told me. “And he turned me on to Derry Girls.”
Derry Girls, for the record, is a British comedy set in Northern Ireland in the 1990s and it’s hilarious. But there are more than 600 scripted television series currently on the constellation of streaming services competing for your credit card number, so if you don’t go on a dedicated search for that specific title, you’ll probably miss it. And that’s one reason there’s a new category of first-date small talk: What are you watching? is the new What’s your sign?
Watching TV has never been so baffling. You don’t just walk in the house and flop down in front of the TV and start flipping around anymore. Watching television in 2024 requires what psychologists and self-help gurus call intentionality. You have to know what you’re looking for and exactly where to find it, which means the entire process usually starts with a Google search. We’re all familiar with today’s Television Catechism. It goes: What was that show we wanted to see, again? Followed by: Which one of the thingy’s is it on? And ends in an exasperated: Do we even get that one?