O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
Liz, my wife, and I had been streaming “Tell Me Lies” on Hulu, which is a show that a 50-year-old man has no business watching, much less enjoying1. We binged on it for three straight days, rarely moving from the couch, and, suddenly, it was over.
“Are you sure that’s the last episode?” my wife asked, although she knew the answer.
“It’s the last one,” I said.
“Are they making another season?”
“No. That’s it. It’s really over,” I said as a sudden surge of sadness ripped through my chest. I’ve never dealt well with endings.
“I guess we’re going to have to find another show watch,” Liz said. By “watch,” I knew she meant “binge.”
I plaintively shook my head. “I guess.”
In an instant, my sadness turned to despair. I didn’t want to find another show. I liked the show that I was watching and then realized that I was entirely unprepared for it to end. I didn’t have another show in mind, nothing in the “on-deck” circle.
I am much better at this when it comes to books. I always have two or three books that I want to read waiting in the chute, stacked in a pile on my nightstand, but when it comes to streaming television series, I’m still fairly new at it.
Of course, there is a larger existential issue at play. How did I get to this point where I spend considerably more time watching television than reading? When did it become my favorite pastime to munch on edibles and melt into a couch for eight-hour clips?
When did these shows on streaming channels replace the live shows that I used to watch when I was younger and had the ambition to get off the couch and actually go someplace?
Somehow the word “show” has shifted for me, and this isn’t a good thing.
Anyone who has an appreciation for music will tell you that watching a band with real chops play live is a transcendental experience, and it is not something that is subject to age. But I find that a lot of the live music I see these days is the result of my either covering the show or profiling one of the musicians.
But this is also a mindgame that I play to get off the couch and out of the house. If I label it “work” then it feels like an obligation, not a decision because my decision, these days, will be to stay at home and watch television shows that appeal to a largely female demographic.
Still, why am I deciding, when presented with the decision, to stay on the couch and watch shows, such as “Tell Me Lies”2 as opposed to going out and enjoying a live show? When and why did this become my preference?
When did I trade “shows”?
I guess I can attribute it to getting older and slowing down. While there are some folks who continue to rock and roll all night throughout their entire lives3, the vast majority of us tend to gravitate toward quiet, sedentary things as we age, saving it up for a Saturday night when the moon hits us right.
This, of course, doesn’t excuse my decision to watch shows over reading. For that, I blame the smartphone.
“So what are we going to do now?” My wife asked, a reasonable question.
I shrugged and said, “We could go out somewhere.”
Liz picked up the remote. “There has to be something that we can watch.”
- I understand that watching a show geared toward college-aged females undermines my entire thesis, but I’m willing to embrace the contradiction. ↩︎
- I may or may not be watching “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette” right now and waiting for the new episode to drop while writing this column. ↩︎
- Often with some chemical help. ↩︎
You can reach Nate Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com