TV
Are TV season finales important now with streaming series? They still are somewhat important for shows that air on network or cable channels, even if people still watch those shows time-delayed on their DVR. But for streaming services, since viewers can watch the shows at their own pace, be it binging an entire season the night it premiers, doling out one episode a week at a time or even waiting months/years to start watching, no one is watching the finales at the same time. And while I love streaming series I feel a bit of a loss for shows that air there.
Let’s look a Stranger Things. The second season of that show premiered on October 24 of last year at midnight Pacific. By the time I was checking the news sites that morning there were already in-depth reviews for a good chunk of the season. And by the end of the day many sites had posted reviews of the finale. So, before most people even had a chance to start watching Stranger Things there were a few people already discussing the finale. I’d guess that by the end of the premiere weekend a good percentage of Stranger Things fans too had binged through the show and were done too.
But for people like me who were watching one episode a week it meant we weren’t finishing until sometime in late November/early December. And by that time most of the talk about the show was done. When I’d talk with friends who’d already binged the show I was met with, “Oh yeah, I think I remember that. It was so long ago… I’m not sure.”
So that collective discussion pop-culture fans used to have about shows mostly isn’t happening for streaming series since everyone’s finishing at different times. For a show like Stranger Things that debuted around Halloween I’d say talk about it online was pretty much over by the end of November.
Shows like Stranger Things don’t so much as have a finale as they do a spectacular, exciting launch and then after a few weeks they pretty much just go away from public consciousness. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, it’s just the reality of modern-day TV watching.
Still, shared experience finales aren’t totally dead. Series that run on network or cable platforms air on a week-to-week basis. A show like Westworld can debut at the start of October and since viewers can’t binge it until the season’s complete they have to watch it week-to-week. So, as the first season of Westworld started winding down towards the end of November there was still excitement about the show online with viewers spending the week dissecting each episode and having theories about where the story was going and how things were going to end.
I know that for most people binging is the preferred way to watch TV. If you’re enjoying something why stop, why not plow through the story and find out how it ends? Which is true, but to me I’d rather savor the story for as long as possible. I think binging a show means you’re not catching the details, you’re not paying attention to what’s all happening and you don’t have time to digest what’s all going on in the story. You’re just going as fast as possible to make it to the end like a race car driver.
And it makes the finales of the shows less and less important. How can they be important when some people will be watching them a few hours after the series premiered while others might not be seeing it for months?
Comics
Robotech Archives: Macross Saga Volume 1
Titan Comics is set to republish the collection of Robotech comic books that originally ran in the 1980s and 1990s starting with Robotech Archives: Macross Saga Volume 1. Covering the first third of the Marcoss series originally published by First Comics, these editions are a, shall we say, “maybe buy” for me. I’m a huge fan of all things Robotech and I collected some of the original Robotech comics when I was a kid. I say “maybe buy” since I’m not sure if the comics are any good or not? I’m worried that I wouldn’t be buying the collection to read, but for the nostalgia factor alone and they’d just be another thing taking up room on a shelf somewhere.
Not that I haven’t done that many times before with many other things!
Movies
Ant Man and The Wasp trailer
Teen Titans GO! To the Movies trailer
The Reading List
- How Living Colour made one of the most prescient albums of the 20th century, and conquered rock ’n’ roll in the process
- Movie Prop Conservation and Restoration
- The Infinity Gauntlet graphic novel is the #1 comic on Amazon
- Heads up: the oral history of Iron Man’s original HUD
Cool Movie Posters of the Week
