Introduction: Why TV?

If I told my ten-year-old self I would be running a blog about TV shows, she would be very confused. Ten-year-old me was a reader and a budding writer, not someone who was really even allowed to watch TV. It stayed like that until my junior year of high school. My parents caved and subscribed to Netflix as a Christmas present and the rest, as they say, is history.

It's true that I haven't read as much after I started watching Netflix and began consuming show after show, things I had heard from my friends that were popular or good shows. Watching Netflix was more of a convenience; I was already carrying around an iPad and a phone in school, so why bring an extra book and fill up valuable backpack space? There were exceptions to this rule, of course. But this isn't a post about the books that survived my high school years. This is about TV and how it's influenced the way I think about and consume media.

I don't mind pushing reading to the wayside because of TV. In fact, I can argue that some shows can be as complicated and deep as a good book series, filled with intriguing characters, worlds, and references, layered and ready to be peeled back. It's about the effort you put into it. While reading requires a certain amount of concentration and TV can be passively viewed in the background, it doesn't have to be.

Last summer I rediscovered YouTube, which I really hadn’t used since middle school. Instead of following vlogs and weekly skits, I found the side of YouTube that shared theories and in-depth analyses, predictions and recaps. My eyes were opened to a new way of watching television and since then in the back of my mind I’m looking for Easter eggs, comparisons, archetypes, foreshadowing, payoffs, red herrings, and other fun things instead of taking my entertainment at face value. Some shows are harder to do this with; sitcoms like The Big Bang Theory are a bit more surface level than something intricate like Sherlock or Game of Thrones.

I figured with this blog I could try my hand at doing my own analyses for others’ enjoyment. If there’s not much to actually analyze, a recap is always nice, especially for shows that don’t always have a “previously on”. Other posts will be spoiler-free reviews of some of those Netflix shows I inhaled as an upperclassman and beyond, as well as spoiler-filled breakdowns of some of the biggest seasons of scripted shows to come out of January 2017.

There’s so much I want to share and so much I’m looking forward to. Look out for my next post!