Happy Netflix Dependence Day
About 94% of private sector workers get July 4th, Independence Day, off as a paid holiday in America. Somewhere around half of those workers have access to Netflix (maybe more than that, depending on how they're counting password sharing). Even if you don't trust Netflix's own eye-popping, self-reported viewership statistics, it's safe to guess based on Nielsen's measurement of the last season that millions of US Netflix viewers will watch "Stranger Things 3" within just a few days of its premiere today. Probably a significant portion of those viewers will binge through the whole season in a single sitting on the holiday.
That's eight hours of television in a single day. It's such a common, normalized thing at this point — I watched the first season of "Big Little Lies" (seven episodes) in a day not too long ago — that part of me, despite having decided to write these thoughts down, still isn't sure if it's worth dwelling on. If you've got the day off and your July 4th plan is to wake up, watch all of "Stranger Things 3" in a single sitting, then emerge from your home at sunset just in time for last call at the barbecue and fireworks, that's great. The only thing I'd ask is, how much does it feel like you have to watch it all at once?
In putting together Digg's review roundup for the show, a line from Germain Lussier's review at io9 got lodged in a particularly weary part of my gray matter:
Among those hiccups, and it was the same problem last season, is that series creators the Duffer Brothers have not crafted an eight-episode television series. They've made a single eight-hour movie. One that probably could have been more like six hours. The show is absolutely designed to be binged over a single day in that it tells one story, structured with a single crescendo, and everything leads toward the final episode.
Lussier doesn't take long to make this point, for which I'm extremely thankful, because it's the question that should be addressed at the top of every review of a show that's released in full-season bursts on streaming platforms: does the show in question demand to be watched as an overly-long movie, or is it paced like a television show? This information can help a reader decide whether or not they'll watch the show, how they'll go about watching that show if they choose to.
The review goes on to say that there are episodes of "Stranger Things 3" that "feel like the whole series is pressing the pause button." I'm intimately familiar with the palpable difference between binging through the most listless episodes of a show that's ultimately entertaining and the pleasure-killing act of giving those lesser episodes too much room to breathe.
When I hear eight continuous hours, I think of a workday, not casual TV time. In two recent essays, Longreads culture columnist Soraya Roberts identifies two exhausting trends in culture-at-large that are especially out of hand when it comes to entertainment: the effect that "flooding," or everyone rushing in to write about the same subject, has on whose work actually gets seen, and how so much of pop culture, cast as essential, is turned into homework. We've probably all been told, at some point or another, that we must watch something, and it's very possible you've been the one saying to someone else or even to yourself that there's some show (or movie, book, album etc.) that is obligatory to consume. Roberts' essays maintain that this attitude both misunderstands the function of art and continually recreates a vacuum for responses to so-framed "necessary" art that is quickly overstuffed time-and-again.
Netflix's benediction to the television watching public — and to the writers not fortunate enough to receive advance screeners but who, either by choice or likely out of a pressing need for clicks, will write about "Stranger Things 3" as soon as humanly possible — is to drop all eight hours of the show on a day that those viewers are likely to have off from work. With all that free time, there's no excuse to fall behind.
Those two pieces by Roberts have been rattling around in my head for a while because thinking way too much about pop culture time investment is familiar territory for me. It's core to the "Fan Service" series of pop culture viewing guides that I wrote here at Digg. That said, the series was inspired by the reaction I had to what I felt was an excessive act of homework-ization that had, to my chagrin, become quite popular: the "Machete Order" for the Star Wars films (two years ago I was even more openly opposed to it than I remember being, having called that order "wrong" in my article). My guides are supposed to be at least a half-step removed from the content onslaught that precipitated them.
I wanted, and still want, these guides to be accessible generally to folks who know next to nothing about a given series or franchise, but in light of this "Stranger Things 3" Independence Day drop and with the perspective of Roberts' columns, I see the audience I really set out to target a bit clearer. The people I hope those guides help most are those who feel, like I have, that a given chunk of pop culture is both too intimidating to simply try without a scaffolding of context and far too "necessary," at least in a certain subculture, to choose not to consume. Maybe the few thousand words I wrote about "Star Wars," the Marvel Cinematic Universe and so on are at least an aid to the people who find them and feel alienated by the thousands of pieces that "flood" our feeds whenever a new installment is released, or by the myriad references and memes that later spread as though a familiarity with the source material is universal.
The feeling I carry even when I remind myself that no pop culture can lay claim to my time is that I can't shut out or escape those unceasing engagement mechanisms that have attached themselves to art and culture. Today, even as many US publications slow way, way down for the holiday, you'll be able to find dozens, if not hundreds of new articles about "Stranger Things 3," whether pre-written or drafted in a mad rush as the Netflix algorithm queued up something else. Of course, this article isn't not a piece queued to be published on a day off, pegged to a popular television show in a bid to grab your interest. Following Netflix's lead, I want your time on a day off (though considerably less of it).
Lots of pieces written in response to "Stranger Things 3" will be worth the time they take to read, but if you, having not watched the show, can face down a deluge of recaps, takes, explainers and more without ever wondering if you should be watching the show, then you've figured out a way to live that myself and many others evidently haven't. I struggle to imagine feeling like nothing so inconsequential as a television show could possibly exert a pressure on you rivaling that of your job. It should be the easiest thing, but it somehow isn't. At least it isn't May Day or Labor Day.