Still Watching...

I recently closed out three series -- "The Last Thing He Told Me," "Norsemen" and "Alice In Borderland," which happened not long after finishing "The Diplomat." Being a completist is a tough choice.

“Still Watching” is a recurring feature on all the random and ongoing episodes that make up a patchwork (seemingly endless) viewing experience we can all relate to.

They say that endings are hard. They also say that closure is healthy and important. But the choice to relentlessly, sometimes stubbornly, follow a show until its season ends seems, while a very personal decision, wildly outdated.

Why don’t they talk about that?

This is a new realization for me. Maybe it’ll pass. It’s probably just a mood.

But while I was watching a ton of television lately — on purpose, of course — I came to think even more fondly of the idea I’m trying to get across and share here: that, like books, old movies, undiscovered music — there’s no rush to discover the au courant of them or any strand of overwhelming, omni-present culture. Relax. All of it happens in its own time here, where we believe that following 16 shows, week-to-week, episode to episode, on-time and in the zeitgeist, is really more of a late 90s and before kind of thing. It’s definitely not a Peak TV or pandemic (or even post-pandemic) kind of thing. Those are old rituals. To survive, we must learn and we are learning to move past them.

Namaste.

Otherwise, well, what kind of life is that? Shit is hard out there. People are doing work and going outside afterward and trying to read novels on the nightstand recommended by The New Yorker, while also trying to raise a kid or two or manage some elder family member’s care or wrangle some pets who can’t go to Europe for the summer and can’t be left in some shabby pet hotel start-up from recent college graduates of mid-level ambition.

Who can breathe under all this pressure? Don’t go telling me that the second season of “The Bear” has started when I haven’t finished the first, because I don’t need your side eye judgment and all the pressure it would take to get caught up just so I could talk intelligently about it at the BBQ and birthday for the kid down the block on Sunday.

Whew. OK.

Well, we don’t support that here. We’re all about understanding you’re drowning and you’ll get to what you get to in time. No rush.

So why did I find myself driven to watch multiple episodes of a few series? Was it just to be done — to check a box? Closure? Oh, so that’s how they decided to end this thing? I mean, making a decision like that seems ill-advised. For me, just think about it — watching five or six hours of a drama, just to get to the end, is really five or six hours that could have been spent on five or six different shows, not one.

And I did that extra-watching three times.

(Four if you count “The Diplomat,” which I mentioned recently but absolutely still counts and is worth noting again.)

It was roughly 15 hours, I would guess, spent on four shows. Think how much more valuable and interesting this post would be if I was commenting on 15 shows instead of three or four? More bang for your buck! More value for my time investment!

But no. Now all I’ve got is this silly t-shirt and three endings to judge.