I like to watch TV. I’m particular about what I watch, and different moods call for different shows. Sometimes I want a laugh. Sometimes I just want something to zone out at. But most of the time, or so I like to think, I watch TV to be stimulated. To be challenged. To feel something I wouldn’t otherwise.
It’s hard to put into words exactly what I mean by this. Once upon a time, around 2013, I was a TV fiend who genuinely made it a goal to watch just about every culturally relevant show “on the air.” A decade ago this was somewhat attainable, and the sheer amount of time it required made some sense because I had aspirations of becoming an entertainment critic. This was the year House of Cards debuted, which might be better known as the launch off point for a generation of original streaming shows if its lead actor hadn’t been accused on many counts of sexual assault. It was also the year Breaking Bad ended its magnificent run and claimed a spot on the Mt. Rushmore of prestige dramas, Mad Men rounded the corner toward its stretch run, and The Americans kicked off a gripping slow burn across six seasons of TV excellence.
A decade later though, plenty has changed. I am not an entertainment critic, which is probably for the best, and there are simply too many shows to keep up with even if it were crucial to my full-time job to do so. Beyond (almost) monocultural affairs like Succession, I find that I need to pick my spots. If it’s genuinely difficult to make a top-10 list of thought and/or feeling-provoking scripted shows every year—even 20—and each season of one of these shows has 10-12 episodes, I start to fill up my free time pretty quickly. And this is just the new stuff that comes out. Over the past year I’ve absolutely loved new seasons of The Bear, BEEF, Industry, Severance, Andor, Better Call Saul, Atlanta, The White Lotus, Barry, and yes, Succession. I’ve also mostly enjoyed shows like The Last of Us, and not even gotten to shows like Euphoria, The Righteous Gemstones, and Poker Face. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? Used to love it. It just ended its run and I don’t think I’ve touched it since 2020.
Every now and then I dip back into lists of stuff I missed—and I’m sure glad of it, because otherwise I wouldn’t have spent many blissful hours with one of the best spy thrillers of all time, The Bureau—but this is a pretty rare action on my part. There are lots of good shows that I’ll probably never get to. Much like my reading list gets longer faster than I can work through it—even if I weren’t a hopeless completionist. So what constitutes time well spent looking at the tube, then? How do I know I’m getting the right stuff transmitted through my senses?
Like I said up top, I want to be challenged by the TV I watch—for it to make me think, pay attention to details, appreciate the seemingly impossible union of an artistic vision and a commercial enterprise. But even more than that, I think I have to admit that I want to keep up on what’s high quality, right now. I want to be in the know. To signal to others that I am in the know, and that my overall taste as an accumulation of that knowledge is…good. I would suspect that this is true of many TV-watchers. In a water cooler convo sense, yes, but even more so in a pat-on-the-own-back sort of way. It’s satisfying to be up to date on whatever you think rules—prestige drama, sitcom, reality show, weird stuff, cartoon, whatever sets the mood.
I watch for that satisfying feeling, whether to hang onto it myself or project it onto others. I think you do too.