March 12, 2105--Remotes

Neil Postman, a good friend who died a few years ago, in 1984 wrote a prescient book about our current age--Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

Long before the proliferation of social media, which enable all of us to put ourselves on the air and potentially become famous (minimally among our "friends"), he spoke about the cultural impact of television. How with its almost universal availability, we could so turn ourselves over to amusements that, though it wasn't contributing to our literal death, it was having such a negative impact on our lives that by submitting ourselves to its lure we were participating in bringing about our own spiritual death. It would render us mindless.

I can only imagine what he would say about Tweets, Instagram, and such.

If you have been following me here, you know that though I share many of Neil's concerns I am attempting to understand this brave new world, looking for the positive things these media and new capabilities are bringing about. Doing this, I remind myself, as Neil once noted, that when the Gutenberg Revolution occurred, once books became widely available, traditionalists at the time decried this new power, feeling, as many again are, that it would destroy all that had been achieved during previous centuries when royal families and the Church held sway. And of course they were right. But as we look back on that powerful paradigm shift, we see things very differently. Most of that change was for the better--individuals became more powerful and as new ideas spread were able to fight to shrug off various forms of oppression.

But this is to be about television. Actually about the remote control, with little emphasis on the remote but with stress on the control.

When remotes first appeared in the mid-1950s, they led to a generation of couch potatoes. One could stretch out on the sofa, a bowl of nuts or pretzels balanced on one's chest, and change channels and adjust volume without having to drag oneself to the TV set.

A corollary benefit was that by switching from channel to channel (and there were at the time only three to ten depending on where you lived) one could get lucky and avoid seeing any ads. While I Love Lucy was taking a commercial break one could switch to Gunsmoke or Leave It to Beaver. All from a prone position.

Faced with this remote problem that empowered viewers to roam from program to program, since TV is more about making money than putting shows on the air, executives figured out a way to cooperate while competing for ratings--they agreed to air content and commercials in identical program blocks. So now when you switch around from Hardball on MSNBC when it is taking a break you find that so is OutFront on CNN and On the Record at Fox. There's nothing to watch except ads for Humira.

And as gender relations continue to evolve, when in the past men dominated the use of the remote, now more woman want equal access to it. One of our ongoing spats is about who get to control the remote control. When we're in bed together, Rona wants to catch the latest episode of Girls while I want to watch Al Jazeera America.

In the city we have just one TV so I am thinking that maybe what we need is two remotes. His and Hers.

When we get back to town I'll check with Time Warner to see what's possible. Maybe there is one designed especially for men (pretty much in the current masculine Freudian shape) while there's another, perhaps rounder, for women.

May 6, 2014--Law & Order

We have a problem.

With considerable effort and tenacity, via Netflix streaming, we worked our way through nearly five seasons of The Good Wife (112 episodes!) and are, like the rest of America, waiting for the final two episodes to air.

Questions await resolution--

Will Alicia Florrick quit her firm and return to Lockhart & Gardner, to join Diane as co-senior partner? What will Kalinda be up to next and who will she take to bed? And what about the Michael J. Fox character, Louis (the Devil) Canning? With the remaining year of his life, will he work to rebuild LG or finally, from within, succeed in bringing it down? And then what about Alicia's husband Peter, the governor? Will he be able to fend off accusations of voter fraud, stay out of jail, and keep the bimbos at bay?

So you see, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

But, very soon, we will be done with The Good Wife, as we are with the 26 episodes of House of Cards, until at least next fall.

Thus our problem--what to do between now and then?

For decades we avoided watching TV series. Claiming this was because we wanted to reserve ourselves for "higher things" such as reading. OK, also to compulsively watch news on TV. But we avoided all series, in truth worried we'd like them, get drawn in, and even addicted.

What happened to so dramatically change our viewing habits?

Last summer, over lobster rolls with our friend Ann, she told us that via streaming she was watching for a second time all episodes of West Wing.

Now, Ann is a very accomplished person. She has been a dean and vice president at a number of major universities and and we were surprised to hear that she was so involved with TV shows of this kind. If anything, one would take her for a PBS/C-SPAN type.

"You've never seen it?" she was incredulous to learn, "I would have thought . . ."

"I know a couple of people who were involved," I said, "Gene Sperling, who wrote a few episodes and I think was a story consultant, and Anna Deavere Smith who . . ."

"Played Nancy McNally," Ann said, "the president's national security advisor. You should give it a try. I think you'll love it."

And indeed we did. We watched all 154 episodes over two months and loved them all. Some days, actually nights, watching four or five, staying up as late as 2:00 a.m.

But now . . .

We couldn't make ourselves watch more that the first 15 minutes of the first episode of Game of Thrones. Too much gratuitous violence. And we didn't do much better with Breaking Bad, touted by a number of fiends to whom we confessed we had become fully addicted to entertainment programming. We watched the first two episodes but didn't get hooked. Again, too violent, too grimy, and not about a subject we care about--a professor making and dealing methamphetamine. Really?

The Wire sounds good--also recommended, especially by a cousin who grew up in Baltimore where it was set. But it doesn't appear to be available vis streaming, only DVD discs and we don't have a VCR up in Maine and have no intention of getting one. We're even thinking about leaving our Roku device in New York to keep Maine as media-free as we can handle.

Another friend, who is a confessed TV addict and has great taste in books, movies, theater, and food, has been talking about Law & Order for years. It's her favorite show and stars Jerry Orbach. Good enough for me. So while waiting for the return of House of Cards, Good Wife, and, I almost forgot, Homeland, we'll check it out.

Netflix does stream it so maybe we will take Roku with us, and since it ran on TV for 20, yes, 20 years, there are 456, yes, 456 episodes. I calculate that if we limit ourselves to just one a day, it will take 14 months to get through all of them. All right, if it grabs us we'll watch two a day over only seven months.

But if our experience with West Wing is a guide, we'll get high on five a day, staying up to at least midnight, and this means we'll be done in about three months. That could work.

But, then again, after that, what will we watch? Maybe West Wing all over again? Like Ann.

I'll let you know how we do. As they say, stay tuned.

December 12, 2013--On Demand

We're trying to cut back on our TV watching; but with all the newfangled ways to watch, this is proving to be difficult.

Our cable systems both in New York and Maine for some years have offered On Demand as part of their basic package. It in theory allows one to watch favorite shows after their initial broadcast date, and so if you were out late on Monday night you could catch Dancing With Stars later in the week. I say theoretically because we have used On Demand only sparingly since I've not always been able to figure out how to make it work and at those times I was able to, On Demand service often was experiencing technical difficulties.

But recently, either I've gotten better at this or they have improved their service and so we've been glued to the screen more than we would like.

Homeland has contributed to our undoing.

We'd been reading and hearing about it for quite some time and, desperate to find something decent to watch, and not interested enough to even check out the Duck people or the Kardashians, we reluctantly subscribed to Showtime so we could watch the first two seasons via On Demand.

There are 13 episodes a year and we knew that if we got hooked we'd have to watch two year's worth,  26, before being up-to-date sufficiently to enjoy the current, third season.

And hooked we became even before watching half of the first episode. We fell quickly in love with Carrie, Sergeant Brody, and the Mandy Patinkin characters and stayed up until 1:00 AM, intoxicated after watching the first four episodes.

Rona said to bleary-eyed me, "How about one more? Just one more?"

"You said that at 11 o'clock, two episodes ago, and here we are and it's well past midnight. We can always . . . There are more than twenty . . ." I think those were my last words before I nodded off.

When I got up at later in the morning, about 6:30, unusually--since Rona likes to sleep to at least 8:30--she was literally lying in wait for me.

"Are you OK?" I mumbled, half-asleep.

"I'm fine. Just waiting for you to get up so we can watch a couple of episodes before breakfast."

"You've got to be kidding. Can't we wait until after we've had coffee?"

"I thought we could then finish the first season. We'd only have seven or eight to go and . . ."

"Seven or eight translates into seven or eight hours! Are you sure that . . ."

Rona was already heading downstairs to get the coffee going.

We gulped our coffee and by 7:30 I was fiddling with On Demand--which fortunately was working--and we plowed through the rest of the initial season.

"And then this evening we can get started on season two," Rona chirped.

This was two weeks ago. By now we have watched both the second season of Homeland and are up to date with this year's episodes--three to go. We are on tenterhooks to see what will happen to Brody in Iran. Will they kill him off? Will he rehabilitate his reputation by helping to overthrow the Iranian government? Will . . . ?"

And while we've been at it, to be able to tune into other TV shows we missed, we subscribed to Netflix and got our hands on all 13 episodes of House of Cards, which, as with Homeland, we joyfully watched marathon-style. Kevin Spacey is so deliciously evil.

Eager to be set for season two, I did a little googling and found that Homeland was not released in the normal way--assuming anything of this sort is normal these days. Produced by Netflix itself, not a traditional source of programs, all 13 episodes were released the same day--February 1, 2013--which meant that someone thus inclined could watch all 13 that day or in any way they wished to space them out: two at a time, one-by-one each week at the same time like a normal TV series, or whatever.

"Welcome to the brave new world of TV," Rona said when I reported this to her.

"Actually, it's welcome to the brave new world of the Internet since I'll bet most of House of Cards' younger viewers watched it on their computers."

"Or smart phones or tablets," Rona added. "Whatever those are."

I have a friend who works for a technology start up. I asked him, "Is it true that you can work whatever hours are best for you? From home as well as the office? Do they give you free snacks and take care of your dry cleaning and pets?"

"I don't have a pet; but, yes, I can bring my dry cleaning to the office and do my thing from anywhere. That's the way I work," he said, sensing I wasn't getting it.

"And the people you report to are OK with that?"

"As long as I get the job done and they like my work product. But, you know, there's a new manager who wants us to work more collaboratively, including taking breaks at the same time so we can have coffee together and chat."

Since I had been thinking about TV, I asked how much he watched.

"Quite a lot, though I don't actually have a TV. I pretty much stream everything."

"I was wondering about that," I said and told him about our experience with On Demand and Netflix.

He smiled, amused that someone as technologically skeptically and illiterate as I would be venturing into this new territory. He didn't have to add--someone from my generation!

"Here's what I worry about," he is informed and well-read for someone from his generation, "I'm concerned that these ways of working and entertaining ourselves are contributing to a generation of people who have no ability to suspend gratification--that we're becoming an on-demand world."

"That concerns me too."

"A nation of people bowling alone."

With his thoughts preoccupying me, I still can't wait to see what happens to Brody in Iran and if Kevin Spacey gets his comeuppance February 14th when all 13 second-season episodes of House of Cards will be streamed by Netflix.

"Get your rest," Rona suggested.