Anghus Houvouras is drowning an ocean of media….
I’m drowning in media. An ocean of movies, TV shows, video games, comic books, podcasts, webcasts, websidoes, and enough streaming media to choke Godzilla. My already fractured attention span is under assault from a dearth of high quality entertainment.
I can remember a time when you had to really search to find geek related media. When you were lucky to get a comic book themed movie or TV show every few years. When shows about comic book characters were rare, and when they did get produced they were off the air faster than the Flash. There were so few ‘must see’ shows back then. Television was a wasteland of poorly produced garbage and movies were barely capable of generating the kind of jaw dropping FX to produce the kind of spectacle that would appropriately sell the kind of sci-fi, fantasy movies nerds like myself craved.
Times have changed. In the last week i found myself binge watching House of Cards season 2 while getting caught up on True Detective on HBO Go prior to the finale, digesting the weekly comic book offerings, watching regularly scheduled shows like Resurrection, Community, Rick & Morty, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Brooklyn Nine-Nine… Then there’s the webcasts and online video series I follow regularly. Honest Trailers from Screen Junkies, the Everything Wrong With series from Cinema Sins. The great weekly content from the guys at Red Letter Media. Jerry Seinfeld’s extremely entertaining webseries Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I hear there’s this great new show called… Hold on: I’ve got mail.
Son of a bitch. I just got an email that season four of Archer is now available on Netflix Streaming. Wait, what? From Dusk Till Dawn the series just hit the air? Mad Men is back on April 15th? Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out in two weeks? Sherlock Season 3 is already available for streaming? I gotta figure out how Sherlock faked his own death before someone spoils it. Excuse me, I need to go breathe into a brown paper back for a few moments.
I’m now staring at a note taped to my monitor that says ‘Start watching Arrow season 1 NOW!”, because frankly I haven’t even started. The Suicide Squad (my favorite core comic concept) is coming and I haven’t even finished the pilot. The same thing goes for Game of Thrones, a show that has been irreparably spoiled, every major twist and turn having been telegraphed on every form of social media. I know that Ned Stark doesn’t make it past the first season. The Red Wedding holds no surprises to me. Such is my burden.
Keeping up with all this is exhausting. I haven’t even mentioned the number of AAA Video Game titles that sit pristine and unopened on my desk waiting to be played.
There is so much quality programming out there. It’s an orgy of excess. The amount of quality geek related product out there is daunting. And it’s only going to get worse. The Flash is coming to the CW. They’re making a Constantine TV series. Marvel is putting out a half dozen new series to Netflix including fan favorites like Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Daredevil. Batman is going to donkey punch Superman and the Avengers are taking on Ultron. I feel like Jesse Spano in that episode of Saved by the Bell where she becomes addicted to caffeine pills. I’m seemingly moments away from breaking down and singing “I’m so excited… I’m so excited… I’m so… scared!”
This is the our shared modern problem. Not that there isn’t enough cool stuff to watch, but that there’s too much. A sense of panic and anxiety that grips us. The fear of missing out on something cool because the flow of product is relentless, and frankly tiring. ‘Must See TV’ used to be a slogan used by NBC to describe two hours of comedy programming that came on Thursday nights including classics like Cheers and Seinfeld. Though to be fair it also included dreck like Wings. But now, everything is ‘Must See’. Every network is producing a high percentage of geek friendly fare. The entire entertainment industry, who once spurned my geeky advances is now courting me with hours upon hours of programming.
It’s unfortunate, because I lack the time to watch it all. This is a selfish rant from a grown up geek that has witnessed first hand the transformation of the entertainment industry that seems to be catering more and more to my own tastes. A buffet of countless gourmet courses being laid out but a limited number of trips that can be taken. This is a golden age for geeks in almost every medium. It’s a glorious time for younger geeks, or shiftless layabouts with too much time on their hands.
I am, unfortunately neither. I’m the old man at the end of the Twilight Zone episode “Time Enough At Last” who wants nothing more than to be able to read his books but can’t find the opportunity, slowly driven into insanity by the stories I’ll never get to.
This is my burden.
Anghus Houvouras is a North Carolina based writer and filmmaker. His latest work, the novel My Career Suicide Note, is available from Amazon.
Originally published March 14, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
