O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
My wife was communicating with angels.
She participates in a Zoom meeting once a month with a group of her fellow witches and weirdos who try to raise their vibrations and communicate with angels. No one is harmed, and I’ve found that it is best to not think too hard about the whole thing.
I, however, wanted to watch “Hightown” on Netflix, which Liz and I had started watching the previous week, and was waiting patiently for her celestial correspondence to wrap up.
“It’s fine if you want to watch the show without me,” she said, taking out her ear buds and calling to me across the kitchen. “I’ll catch up with it later.”
“Are you sure? You won’t be mad?” I asked.
“I’m sure,” she said. “You look like you’re getting antsy, and I’m don’t know how much longer I’m going to be in my meeting.”
“With the angels?”
“With people. We’re communicating with the angels.”
“Do the angels drink beer?”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she said, rolling her eyes, plugging her ear buds back in then returning to her tribe.
So I went ahead and watched a couple of episodes of “Hightown,” stopping before the Season 2 finale so we could watch it together. The truth is that “Hightown” falls far short of exceptional television. If you’re not familiar with the show, think “Breaking Bad” if it were written entirely during a writers’ strike. However, the show, set on Cape Cod, manages to squeeze in just enough plot twists to keep me hooked.
As I was finishing an episode, my wife came into the living room where I was supine on the couch. She stood over me with her arms crossed. I paused the show.
“I see you couldn’t wait for me,” she said, shooting daggers at me with her eyes. “You just couldn’t help yourself, could you? I knew you wouldn’t wait for me.”
“But you told me to go ahead and watch it. Isn’t that what you said?”
“You should’ve known that I didn’t mean it. I’m going to bed now,” she said and stormed into our bedroom, slamming the door for its dramatic effect.
Cue the next episode in The Great Couples Streaming Debate.
In hindsight, maybe I should’ve known. I don’t know. I’ve had a checkered history of skipping ahead and binging a streaming series that we were supposed to watch together, starting with the show “Weeds,” circa 2010, and continuing with “Breaking Bad,” “The Walking Dead,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and, most recently, the three-episode series “Adolescence.”
The truth is that I don’t have exceptional impulse control when it comes to…well, just about anything in my life. When I like something, I really like it, and if that “thing” is readily available, I have difficulty stopping myself from indulging.
So when the “Next Episode” bar counts down on Netflix—the bold rectangular box in the lower right corner of the screen fills up like an inverted hourglass—I really mean to turn off the television, but it never seems to happen on its own.
But I also don’t believe that I’m completely in the wrong here. If you’re going to make the commitment to binging a television show, you both need to be all in on it. Why should the other person have to sit on the couch and watch “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” reruns while their spouse communicates with angels?
As an English teacher—and a former English major—I might have a solution. Perhaps my wife and I could institute a viewing syllabus, similar to a reading syllabus, to keep us both on track. If she misses an episode because she was chit-chatting with Gabriel then it should be her responsibility to catch up.
If the viewing syllabus says that we’re watching the Season 2 finale on Thursday night then we’re both responsible for being caught up by Thursday night. Fair is fair.
That is not, however, how it played out.
The next morning, as we were getting ready for work, it was pretty clear that Liz was still sore about my skipping ahead on “Hightown” and staying up for another hour after she went to bed.
“How was the Season 2 finale of ‘Hightown,’” she asked, shoving the ice coffee back in the fridge as I reached for it.
“I wouldn’t know. I was waiting for you to watch it with me,” I lied.
“You should just go ahead and watch it. I’m not going to have time to catch up,” she said.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Shut up,” she said, then left for work.