When On-Demand is Off Base

Most people will agree that On-Demand viewing is a great convenience. We all have busy lives. We’re all trying to be everything to everybody. So watching your favorite television shows when your schedule, and not the network’s, permits you to is gravy.

We’ve obviously all wanted on-demand since TV was invented and now that we have it our lives are better…

Or are they?

Dexter

When everybody watches television at their own convenience, how are people supposed to talk about episodes, or finales even. Case in point, the one show that I follow is called Dexter. I only follow one, because I generally view TV watching as a monumental waste of time. I also get caught up easily in character story lines and end up feeling lame for wondering if Jackie is ever going to get back with Kelso, or whatever.

What ended up hooking me onto Dexter was the show’s underlying question: Is Dexter a good person who does bad things, or a bad person who does good things?

I know that the show is about a serial killer who happens to also be a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department, and that may be off-putting. And I understand that the show’s morbid sense of humor doesn’t necessarily appeal to a wide audience. I’m ok with that, as I’ve never seemed to have a problem finding somebody with colorful tastes in television programming to match my own… until now.

Now I not only have to find somebody who’s into the show, and all its quirkiness, AND who is synced with me on their viewing schedules. What?

I admit that I generally on-demand it with Dexter because the writers love to cliff hang him at the end of most every episode. He always gets out of it, but it never looks like it can happen. Being a product of our on-demand culture, I must see the next episode immediately following the one I am watching to make sure that everything turns out all right.

I require closure.

Less Talk

But therein lies the problem. By gratifying my own curiosity around the next step in the show’s storyline, I end up alienating myself from any real conversation, speculation, or conjecture around what will happen next, with friends who also watch the show. That’s the good stuff, and I’m missing out on the good stuff.

I never realized the err of my ways, because there hasn’t been a finale like the one that occurred last night. In a word, whoa! No spoiler alerts, just whoa!

So I went into work today determined to find somebody who might have caught it, and there was nobody. My only two prospects were one season behind and six episodes behind respectively.

Huh?

Parting Shots

So the next time you decide that you’ll just catch an episode on-demand, instead of when it goes live, make sure you think about everything you’re giving up in the process. It’s the social aspects around a television show that make it great. Talking to people about a show makes the experience of watching it great. We can’t lose lose sight of that, even if it is a lot more convenient.

And if you have never watched Dexter, I fully recommend it. I didn’t think it was possible, but Season Four topped them all. John Lithgow was brilliant throughout the season, as was Michael C. Hall of course. Definitely worth a look.