I’m at my grandfather’s old flat tucked within a sprawling hospital complex in the heart of Chennai. It’s 3 a.m., and everyone else has kicked their jetlag and figured out how to sleep through the air conditioner, which keeps things at a balmy 5ºC. I’m GChatting a friend stateside about how bored I am when she makes the suggestion (injunction?) that changes everything.
This, you see, is the night I learn about online streaming—the beginning of my ongoing love affair with television.
Things move pretty fast after that. With an entire world of links at my fingertips, I quickly forget what it’s like to catch odd episodes of Kim Possible in waiting rooms and learn how to watch things sequentially and devotedly. I acquire favorite recappers and try to see what they see; I learn about ADR and lazy writing and how it’s okay, in some circles, to talk about fictional characters as if they’re your own hyper-attractive friends who never have their sh*t together. I start tracking my docket on SideReel.
If I told you I’ve watched a lot of TV, you’d probably point out all of the New American Classics I haven’t seen (The Office (2005-2013) , The Sopranos (1999-2007), Breaking Bad (2008-2013). Better to say I’ve watched an assortment of stuff, ranging from several years of the original Japanese Ninja Warrior (1997-present) watched as a family affair to the Netflix original programming that fuels the thinkpiece-industrial complex.
I want to try doing something with all of the hours I’ve logged watching the shows themselves, poring over recaps, drafting dissertation-length speculative iMessages and generally ruminating.
That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy. Writing about TV feels both too frivolous (greetings, future employers! I promise I don’t think vampires exist) and too real, because the shows I think about often reflect parts of myself or my world. There is a particular intimacy to letting you in on how and why they sit in my head. Maybe I should imagine you reading this in your underwear.
Also, I have no idea how to fill up these weeks. Should I only write about shows I like? Shows I recommend? Shows that pay me to promote them? (This criterion currently applies to no shows at all.)
Let’s make some ground rules, so that you (I) don’t feel like I’m totally winging this:
- I’m not promising consistency. Some weeks, I’ll treat this like a full-series review; other weeks, I’m going to zero in on something in particular.
- Discretionary spoilers. I’m going to assume you know Orphan Black (2013-present) is about clones, but I won’t talk about how I still lie awake sometimes contemplating the last-second twist in the third season finale, which left _____’s life hanging in the balance.
- Talk to me on Twitter/Facebook, or in Eaton Lab! My hope is to achieve AV-Club-comment-board civility and unabashed geekiness, but in real life. I’m cool with disagreements that aren’t rooted in different realities (White people, please don’t tell me if you don’t agree that a show has a race problem.)
