Tune in This Sunday
The time between Halloween and the New Year is often my busiest. Everyone always scrambles to see each other before hibernating all winter, and I thrive on the chaos of fitting each event into my schedule. Last year alone I had 5 holiday parties at work.
Of course, the pandemic has entirely cleaned out my calendar until 2022.
The one consistent activity I’ve had to look forward to is The Bachelorette. I’ve never been so fascinated with reality TV. Generally I'm an avid true crime watcher, but this year it’s been too much to indulge in more horrible stories. Instead I want to see girls with botox selling LA houses and hot couples trying to abstain from sex on a tropical island. This is the content my pandemic brain needs.
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Tuesdays have now become a day of solace. For those 2 hours I don’t feel the need to work or be productive. I'm content just to watch Tayshia and Clare on their "journey" to love.
More than that though, Bachelorette night has become something to look forward to. It's an event that I plan for each week and discuss for the next few days. In all honesty, the show has become an anchor point in my conversations. Chris Harrison's antics are a talking point that isn't the pandemic, mental health, or the day-to-day monotony of lockdown. They're something net new that we can joke about, and the interstitial content surrounding each episode is vast. From blogs to podcasts to Live Screams, there is an endless pool of mind-numbing discussion to take me out of my head and connect me to other fans.
With my calendar bare, The Bachelorette has become an unexpected grounding force. Truly, I've never been more excited to tune into anything, so please feel free to send in your predictions. Help me focus on anything but COVID.
Coming Up After The Break
As people we are designed for planning what comes next. That’s part of what makes us different from other animals. We’ve climbed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to visualize endeavours beyond shelter, food and even vegetable gardens. At this point we’ve practically automated our basic needs: grocery delivery on Sunday, Amazon automatic refills, condo staff to maintain our environment. The bulk of our days are spent tending to the upper portion of the pyramid, our psychological and self-fulfilment needs. We have the luxury of questioning where we belong, whether or not we have meaningful relationships, and what our full potential is.
Or at least we did.
Pandemic life is a different story. Each week the restrictions could be different, and there’s nothing solid to lean on. For instance, it’s November 15th and I still have no idea if I can see my family for Christmas.
All of these unknowns make it tough to stay steady. Uncertainty of the future causes stress - that's why cliffhangers work. We will keep tuning in to see which contestants fight over and over again. In television, though, unknowns are resolved in 30-60 minutes. With COVID there are no timelines.
Generally the situations we try to envision ourselves in are hopeful, but people with anxiety have a proclivity to focus on negative hypotheticals. During a pandemic it’s almost impossible to imagine a future reality that’s exactly the way we want it to look. We're essentially living inside of an anxiety incubator.
That said, having events to look forward to can help mitigate the fear of future outcomes. The anticipation of positivity gives us something other than dread to focus on. Moreover, having a calendar filled with upcoming fun has been shown to increase self-discipline. The expectation of good times forces us to complete tasks we may otherwise avoid. For example, getting ahead at work before leaving for a vacation.
When life is this bleak, creating those milestones is crucial. In quarantine we often struggle with structure because we don’t have anything to structure around. Who cares if I clean the kitchen today or tomorrow? Without that upcoming dinner party, no one will see it anyway.
To this end, one article asserts that anticipation can ‘be a stepping stone to “hope.”' The more we have to look forward to, the more optimistic we can be.
Online shopping is what got me through the bulk of the spring and summer months. The constant fleet of packages kept me looking forward, and new clothes forced me to keep my closet organized. I knew that every few weeks I’d get a gift from myself in the mail, and that was enough to maintain my energy.
Now it's not.
I have to heighten the stakes for my positive thrills. The Bachelorette keeps us coming back because things change year over year. The producers up the anti to capture our attention, and it works. We get excited for each new episode because we don’t know what to expect.
A fifth new sweater is no longer capturing my attention. So now what?
Mark’s favourite anecdote as of late is that there is 'no difference between courage and fake courage'. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what drives you to do the right thing in a moment of fear. What counts is the action. Similarly, having a bunch of activities to look forward to doesn’t inherently make you an optimist, but creating a future schedule can yield a positive a more positive outlook.
In other words, fake it ’til you make it.
Just wow.
Now Back to The Bachelorette
Winter is looming, and building that “fun” schedule is daunting. Activities don’t plan themselves, and my energy is at an all time low. Even the most basic of decisions have become tiring.
Mark and I like to watch a show before bed. We often read, make some tea, and put on something for the last hour before shutting down. The process of choosing is always gruelling. I don’t really care what we watch, I just want to be entertained. Let me drift away from the stress of the day and share something with my partner. A moment of connection where we don’t have to do anything.
Alas, picking a show feels like doing something. Committing to something new is risky, and shows like Gilmore Girls are intimidating to start over. So many episodes, none of which were made for the binging era...
Part of the issue is the abundance of choice. We see it on dating apps: too many possibilities. How do you focus on one person when your pocket is full of options? This also happens with brands. A few choices is good to feel like we have agency, but too many kinds of face moisturizer and I panic. Walking into Sephora is overwhelming when you’re just looking to browse. Where do you begin? What corner of Netflix should we be scrolling through?
I love the gym, but one of my favourite ways to exercise is in a spin class. Sometimes there is nothing better than having someone else take control of the workout. It eliminates the guess work. The overwhelming sense of “that machine is taken, what do I do now?”, or the fear that you haven’t maximized your time.
There used to be a time when we were restricted to what was offered on cable television. No brain power required. Now I find myself nostalgic for that structure. If only we had a Bachelorette equivalent for every night of the week.
In the monotonous quarantine lifestyle, having things to look forward to is often linked to novelty. We need to create scarcity in the the world of our apartment for anything to feel different. We look forward to take-out night, new recipes, and the odd zoom activity because they deviate from the norm. The more exclusive the better, because it creates more hype. If we went to get coffee together every day it would lose its charm.
To capture this feeling Mark and I have created our own television programming schedule, and it's been a game changer in our moods. We never have to argue about what to watch because it's formally laid out in the spreadsheet.
Feel free to steal it and watch along:
I know we’re nerdy….
Forever iconic
Time Goes By…So Slowly Slowly
To be clear, I am generally a believer in the binge. That said, I forgot about the thrill of waiting for the next episode. Growing up my life was often structured around TV seasons. Finales were agony, leaving me to spend the summer thinking about how the Lost cast would get un-lost in September, or which new singer I’d fall in love with during tryouts.
Socially the television schedule was integral to keeping up with schoolyard antics. I would go into school knowing that some huge plot device would be ruined over lunch if I hadn’t seen the most recent episode. There is an added level of fun to that experience. A joy of being part of the collective. Each show was an event, and they became the easy pillars to fall back on in conversation.
In essence, TV used to take time. We measure our lives via calendars and watches, but also in other markers. We take standard coffee breaks, have an "after work" feeling, anticipate vacations, etc... TV used to do that too. You could gauge what day of the week it was based on the show line up, and often that would dictate your schedule. Friday Bride Day on TLC, Sunday afternoon Movie, Thursday Night Prime Time. These days used to mean something, and we all experienced it together.
One Buzzfeed article argues that the 2010s ruined our sense of time. Our timelines never sleep, we get notifications from posts we made years ago, shows like Arrested Development become popular years after they’ve stopped airing, and our news comes in fragments from a multitude of platforms. It was an era of “nonlinear acceleration”.
Now it doesn’t matter if you missed the airing of a new show. You can start and stop whenever you see fit. Moreover, no one cares that you missed it, because there’s always something new to talk about. Time has no meaning when everything is accessible at once.
No Spoilers
In researching this weeks’ newsletter I found out that one of my favourite shows on Netflix was cancelled months ago. Tuca and Bertie was a “critically adored” adult animated comedy about two birds in their 30s exploring female friendship and the impacts of longterm trauma. It stars Ali Wong and Tiffany Haddish, and is one of the only animated shows that is female-created and with a diverse cast.
I also loved it. I was an advocate, supporter, and fan, and I totally missed that it had been cancelled.
Why? More interesting stuff was happening on my timeline. More to the point, I had no concept of when to expect an update. Seasons don’t come out in predictable ways anymore, and I forgot the show even existed.
It’s so easy to let your attention wander when there’s a constant stream of updates. Algorithms are built to know you, and I was completely placated by new releases that scratched a similar itch.
In this isolating moment, it’s also hard to know what everyone else is doing for fun. Tiger King took a mind of us own, and, for a brief moment, we all felt connected again. With the abundance of choice, who’s to say your friends are even on the same streaming platform? How many of you even heard of Tuca and Bertie? Over Halloween I noticed close friends dressed as characters that I couldn't name.
Many critics have cited Game of Thrones as the last “water cooler series.” I never watched it, and I definitely felt out of the loop. Now anything I watch is old news by the time I get to it. Binge culture is huge, and spoilers will be online in a matter of minutes after launch. New shows wash over us and are forgotten about as soon as the next wave surfaces. When our perception of time is altered so intensely, our points of commonality suffer. We used to centre ourselves around events and big moments. Now everything is pay-per-view.
The Final Rose
Through all of this, streaming services are vying for our attention. While Netflix releases shows in consistent waves, companies like Apple and Crave have taken a new approach with some of their properties to prolong our attention. Like my schedule with Mark, these weekly releases help create a collective experience and loyal audiences. As stated in The Ringer, “Why would Apple burn off its marquee series in one go when it can hook us on a steady IV drip of Jennifer Aniston monologues?”
And what a drug to be on.
But they have a point. Moving to weekly releases gives people a chance to catch up, to anticipate, and to spend each week discussing what happened. We are living through one of the most isolating eras, and anything that can create commonality is a positive in my books. I never thought I would argue for limiting bingeable content, but, then again, I never thought I'd be quarantined either.
As people we need future excitement, and we need ways to bond. If that comes from weekly instalments of The Bachelorette, then yes, I will accept this rose.
