When I was growing up in Marmalade Falls, we only got two channels on television. One was a local public access channel. The other was the Dumont Network, which officially went off the air in 1956, but was—for some reason—still broadcasting to the Falls into the early 90s. I’m not sure about the science of why it worked like that. I think the theory is that we have “thick air” due to the dust from the sandpaper factory, and it just takes a lot longer for the broadcast waves to reach our antennas.
Of course, we don’t have antennas these days. Cable came to Marmalade Falls in 2012 when Doc Jensen dug the trenches and laid the wires so he could broadcast NCIS: New Orleans at the pub. Since that point, Mom has had the 2500-channel Jensen Cable+++ package and we’ve never looked back.
Watching tv is fun as all hell. I know lots of smart people don’t own TVs and instead they do crossword puzzles or something, but I’m not that sophisticated. I love the tube.
So I needed to have a system for making tv watching as rewarding as possible. Here is my sytem…
No Binging
I never watch more than one episode of a given show per day. Anticipation is a gift. Burning through a show you really like over the course of a day and a half completely negates the excitement and anticipation that happens at the end of a really great episode of television. I’m not suggesting you wait a week between episodes like you used to have to when everything was on broadcast television (although I think that’s not a completely bad idea—some of my most satisfying television watching experiences involved waiting a week and losing my shit wondering what’s going to happen next on Lost or Breaking Bad or Captain N: The Game Master or what-have-you). I’m just suggesting waiting a day between episodes. I’ve been doing this for a couple years now and it’s really added to my enjoyment of shows. Why not stretch something you enjoy over the course of a couple weeks or a month rather than burning through it in a couple days?
Categorize Your Shows
Split the shows you watch into two categories:
- Concentrated Watches
- Distracted Watches
In the Concentrated Watch category are all the shows where you are rewarded for giving your full attention to the show. For me, this category consists of mostly comedies and dramas—narrative shows that tell a story.
The Distracted Watch category is for everything else: reality TV, sports, game shows, cooking shows, rewatches of shows I’ve seen before. These are shows that you don’t lose too much by not being completely engaged while you’re watching. As long as you catch the major beats, you won’t be missing much.
Now, when you watch something in the Distracted Watch category, try to do something else that’s at least somewhat productive. Knit. Clean. Exercise. Practice card tricks. Do some mindless work. Stretch. Whittle. Draw. Juggle. In this way, even though you’re watching garbage, you’re still making headway on something that’s not completely meaningless. I’m not suggesting you multi-task by surfing the internet while you watch TV, then you’re just doing two unproductive activities simultaneously. Instead, work on some craft or skill. So then you won’t end the night feeling bad because you just watched four hours of shit. You’ll feel like you got to watch your show and you worked on something that might be beneficial to you—even if it’s only in a small way—as you go through life.
When it comes to your Concentrated Watch shows, this is what I recommend…
Active Watching
This is something I’ve just started doing recently. When I’m watching a show from the Concentrated Watch list, I get rid of all distractions. No phone, no computer, and none of the other things I might engage with during my Distracted Watch shows. It’s just me and the tv. And I watch in a very particular way. I watch the way this woman watches this episode of Breaking Bad.
This is Ellie. She’s my favorite “reactor” on youtube. When she watches something, she watches it with her full attention. Her eyes dart over the screen. She jumps, she laughs, she cries, she cringes. Of course, reaction videos on youtube have become somewhat performative (if they weren’t always that way). But her reactions still feel genuine.
A couple months ago I started watching tv like this. Not every show. Just my Concentrated Watch shows. I tried it as an experiment. I was sick of watching shows and then remembering almost nothing from them because I wasn’t really paying attention. I figured if I tried to actively watch the shows, I would find them more affecting and memorable. And it worked. I began to watch as if someone was watching me watch and I wanted them to experience the show through me, and it made the whole viewing experience better. And while it felt a little artificial to be so engaged in the shows at first, now it doesn’t. Now it just feels like how I watch the shows. I’ve trained myself to take the shows in completely.
By splitting my shows up into those that will serve as “background” while I work on something more productive or those to which I’ll devote 100% of my attention, TV has become much more enjoyable. And I never feel like I’m waisting my time. I’m either progressing on some task/craft or skill or I’m letting myself be drawn into a good story. I consider those both to be good uses of my time.
Dispatches from Marmalade Falls 
I’ve had an idea for a long while that streaming services like Netflix should let me create playlists that mimic broadcast television. So, for example, I put in several shows… The Good Place, Breaking Bad, Andy Griffith, Twilight Zone, etc… and it knows to cycle through those instead of playing all episodes of a single show back to back. A more advanced version would be setting particular days… Show A I only watch on Thursdays, Show B on Fridays… Show C can be every day. I think it would be a great feature.
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