Netflix is Killing Your Soul

I haven't watched a minute of Lost yet. I figure it'll take a Friday night, the next day, then maybe a few hours on Sunday. And I feel really OK about that.

The thing is, though, for all of those trend pieces about how great the lost weekend is, the lost weekend is killing the art of television. If you sit inside for an entire weekend, that's OK I guess. I like to veg as much as the next, and in the winter it gets cold out. My issue is the structure of the story, moving through a season, which (when done well) can be an art form. Not only are you scripting a single episode that needs its own arc, you're also thinking six or seven episodes down the road. That takes vision, and it needs to be appreciated.

When you're watching an entire season of a long-form narrative in one sitting, you deflate it. Obviously you deflate it in time, but by deflating it in time you deflate all of its suspense. When you have to wait a week to know if Laura Palmer's creepy dad really killed her, it takes stomach. It builds character. You have to be patient, and that wait is built into the storyline's tension.

When the theme music runs right after the last episode's credits, it doesn't matter so much. You'll have your answer immediately.

DVR does the same thing, on a smaller scale. Fast-forwarding through commercials kills the commercial tension. In the same way that advertisers are going to need new ways to find audiences, TV writers are going to change the way they do things. They've got a few very specific tricks up their sleeve, and if you take this one away from them, the shape of the storylines are going to suffer.

I love not knowing who's going to die in a cliffhanger. I think about it endlessly all summer. Will Frank Pembleton die of his stroke? What's it going to be like now that Marissa's dead? Maggie shot Burns? Seriously?

When Nancy called the DEA guy "Agent Wonder Bread," I wondered if he was going to kill her all week. And then a few weeks later, that huge deal at the end of the season! We won't know how it comes out for another few months! (Sanjay's still in the closet, and there's a gun hidden in the microwave.) I love the fact that I'm watching this show in real time.

It's not always possible, but I'm going to try to do everything in real time from now on. It's stupidly Catholic of me, but it just feels right. Tease me with your commercial breaks. Break my heart with your season finales. Make me weep when you get pulled off the air. Let's do this fucking thing, TV.