Last week, in writing about Netflix’s strategy to release all of the House of Cards episodes at once, I spoke of a certain anxiety many of us feel about being left behind, and how Netflix’s strategy plays into that. I worried that a busy Super Bowl weekend would prevent me from watching all of House of Cards over the weekend. That concern was unfounded.
Yes, I watched them all over the course of two nights, and I flat-out loved the show. One night, I even stayed up until 2 a.m. — a heroic sacrifice that NO ONE asked for and, honestly, no one really gives a rat’s ass about. It dawned on me yesterday how completely ridiculous this is, as one outlet after another released posts less about how good House of Cards is, and more about their HARROWING experience. One critic talked about how “stressful” it was. Another said it was “hard to watch television this way.” Another critic said that Kevin Spacey ate her entire weekend. And Variety wrote about the six-stages of binge grief.
Really? Binge grief? That’s when I realized we’d all lost perspective.
It’s a TV show. We’re not saving lives. We’re not even improving lives. That watching 13 episodes of a television show in two days could be called “stressful,” is the VERY definition of a first world problem. It’s not as though we aided people in Darfur; we weren’t even watching a 13-hour documentary on Darfur. It was a television show, and GOOD ONE at that. Oh, poor us! Stuck in front of our iPads for 13 hours watching a compelling, engrossing television show with attractive people saying interesting things. WHERE’S MY MEDAL? Critics weren’t alone, of course: About one-fourth of Netflix subscribers who watched one episode of House of Cards managed to motor through all 13 episodes. THEY DESERVE A MEDAL, TOO.
(Actually, come to think of it, Netflix should provide badges, like we here at UPROXX do for commenting. I want my House of Cards badge, damnit.)
Honestly, people who watch television for a living are not heroes. You know who the REAL heroes are? This Australian guy, below, who used the cover of his hot tub to save his big screen television after his house was flooded. NOW THAT’S HEROISM. Four people died, and thousands were evacuated, but he saved his damn TV, y’all. That’s a man who has his priorities straight. I bet if it’d been available, he’d have also watched House of Cards while avoiding life-threatening flood waters.
(Image via NBC)
