The Show is Streaming

The show is streaming.

Some people are loving the show, and some people are hating the show, but everyone is talking about the show, and the show is streaming. The streaming service is being accessed millions of times a day, a streaming service whose name no one was saying a month ago, whose app icon no one was seeing when they turned on their screens at night. But now everyone is saying the name of the streaming service all the time, and the logo, an eye that is winking, is sitting there every time the TV is turned on, every time the laptop is opened.

It is capturing the public imagination, the show.

The show is making people laugh and it’s making people cry. People are posting and tweeting about how much they are loving it. They are reading posts and tweets from other people about how much the other people are loving it. They are searching the app store for the streaming service, and they are downloading the streaming service, signing up for the two-week free trial so they can also be watching the show, so they can be talking about it at work with the people who are talking about it at work.

The show is being memed. The show is being GIFed. People are posting re-edited content from the show: “best line” compilations, homemade music videos, “15 things you probably missed.” The streaming service is receiving hours and hours of free advertising. People are repeating the male lead’s catchphrase in workplaces, at the dinner table, on morning radio shows. People are laughing in recognition. Someone is texting a GIF of the catchphrase to a group chat, and someone is replying with a crying laughing face.

Critics, who are not people, are very publicly loving the show, as well. They are writing pieces about how everyone should be watching the show, and then pieces about how everyone is watching the show, and then pieces about why everyone is watching the show. They are using the show’s title to label a genre, to label an era of television, to label a generation who is watching this era of television. They are trying to be known for coining these labels.

Some critics are praising the show for capturing the mood of the culture, and some critics are praising the show for changing the mood of the culture, and some critics are chastising the show for failing to reflect the complexity of this moment in the culture. Some critics are lashing out at other critics for failing to recognize the limits of what one show can do, and other critics are insisting on their right to demand responsibility from their entertainment, and still other critics are blocking people who insult them online.

Some people are also rolling their eyes at the show, and posting contrarian takes about the show’s quality. People are accusing each other of not understanding the show. People are debating whether the show is “just entertainment.” Online exchanges about the show are devolving quickly into profanity. People are calling each other “fascists” and “snowflakes.” They are pirating the show through Russian torrent sites. They are arguing over whose lives matter. Women who post about the show are inevitably called “bitches” in the comments and threatened with death and rape.

The actors on the show are appearing on late night talk shows, and people are not watching those shows, but they are watching clips of those shows the next day. The algorithm is leading people to watch more clips of more interviews on more talk shows. People are following the actors on social media, and the female lead of the show is posting a video in which she is promoting an upcoming behind-the-scenes video for the new car commercial that she will be appearing in. Under the video, men are posting comments about her body. All comment threads everywhere are moving inevitably, abruptly, from enthusiasm to abuse. People are seemingly angry all the time.

Episode recaps are being written by freelancers and published by entertainment sites. Compared to the rest of the content, the traffic for these recaps is staggering. Headlines containing the title of the show are being clicked more often than other headlines, and so more articles are being written. The art direction of the show is the subject of many blogs, as are the costumes. The entertainment sites are hungry for any interview related to the show: the director of photography is explaining how they got “that crane shot”; the wardrobe supervisor is analyzing the color palette of the season finale; the featured guest actor is discussing his shocking death scene in the penultimate episode. Spoilers are warned against. The freelancers are writing as fast as they can, during their lunch breaks at their other jobs.

People are taking quizzes to see which character from the show they are.

Critics are having conversations about the political content of the show, and the lack of political content on the show. The show is being debated: Is it a comment on toxic masculinity, trauma recovery, cancel culture, the woke mob? Is the nudity gratuitous? Is the prominent use of a slur necessary or offensive, trolling or envelope-pushing? People online are complaining that the wrong kind of fans are “ruining” the show. The backlash to the backlash is followed by another backlash. A critic for a once-relevant publication is trying to coin the term “discourse cyclone.”

People are telling each other: The show gets good by episode five. The show gets good by the end of the season. The show gets good when you watch it a second time. People are watching the whole season in a weekend, and are unable to tell when episodes begin or end. The next one is starting before the credits are even rolling. The names of the camera operators, set builders, script supervisors, and hairstylists are going unseen by everyone.

The union of technicians, of below-the-line labor, is threatening to strike for shorter hours and higher pay. The Chief Communications Officer of the streaming service is releasing a statement: “A culture of trust, compassion, and transparency is core to our broader story. We are committed to taking all concerns seriously, though we are not discussing specific employee matters at this time. And we are committed to continuing production on this show, which so many people are loving.”

The male lead is giving an interview in which he is referring to all of his female co-stars as “the girls.” The showrunner is giving an interview in which he is referring to the male lead as “the nicest guy in the world.” A two-second clip from a low-budget movie in which the female lead’s breasts are exposed has been shared and posted all over—lightened, slowed down, zoomed in, looped. Everywhere the clip is playing, men in the comments are detailing what they would like to do to the female lead. Some are calling her a whore. No one is mentioning that in the scene from which the clip is taken, the female lead has a black eye and is sobbing.

Magazines are featuring the female lead on their covers and struggling with their decades of dwindling authority.

One of the non-leads, a woman who is often unclothed on the show, is being offered small movie roles as mistresses and sex workers and murder victims and women who are all three. In each offer, she is being told she will have to appear naked again.

Below-the-line labor is agreeing to a marginal increase in compensation. The union president and the streaming service are both claiming victory. Men in suits in a board room are negotiating a bigger budget for the show’s second season. The producers and regular cast members are receiving enormous pay raises, the distribution company executives are receiving bigger bonuses, and the showrunner is buying his assistant a new car. The crew are eating their lunches with one hand while they do their jobs with the other, and an anonymous union member is interviewed on public radio, saying she feels “sold out by leadership.” The radio station is asking for donations to their quarterly pledge drive. The male lead of the show is accepting an 8-figure salary to appear in a superhero movie.

The streaming service is claiming that the show has been watched by 60 million people, a number which no one is able to confirm or refute. Entertainment reporters are calling the CCO to ask how many minutes counts as a “view.” The CCO is releasing a statement praising the showrunner for his astonishing viewership: “People everywhere are voting with their eyes. They are standing up and saying, ‘I like this piece of content. This piece of content speaks to me.’”

The streaming service is buying the distribution company to expand its streaming library. The company that owns the streaming service is selling cookware and electronics and one-cup coffee pods and produce, with no extra charge for 12-hour shipping. Items are being delivered the same evening they were ordered. People are shopping on their phones and watching the show. White men in their 30’s are starting podcasts where they re-watch season one. People who are just finishing season one are complaining that there is no season two yet. The production company’s social media manager is tweeting screenshots and socially conscious memes, reminding people that the show is streaming.

Soldiers are amassing on either side of the Jordan river, and a man in Iowa is walking into a Wegmans with a semi-automatic rifle. First-graders in public schools are reciting “one nation, under God” and crouching behind their desks for lockdown drills. Childless middle-aged men are eating Lucky Charms. Pizza manufacturers are finding new ways to stuff crust. Fast food employees in every state are being groped by their managers and then sent to clean out the fryer. People online are angry that a Black actor has been cast as a superhero who is white in comic books. The local news is showing a grainy photo of a man who matches the description of a man accused of robbing a convenience store, and the anchors are laughing because one of them mistakenly said “circumcised” instead of “circumstances,” and already someone is uploading the video of their laughing fit, and an unarmed Black teenager is being shot outside a 7-11 by a police officer whose bodycam has been turned off, and the news blooper is preceded by the car commercial starring the show’s female lead. “Click here,” the in-video link is saying, “to see the full 5-minute film.”

Young faculty members at universities across the country are adding the show to their syllabi, and parents who were already protesting the universities are adding the show to their list of complaints. They’re calling for firings and revokings of tenure, they’re demonstrating on campus with signs that say, “What are our children learning?” and “What are we paying for?” Conservatives are yelling that the show is an attack on young American men, and progressives are yelling that the showrunner is a serial harasser. None of the yelling is stopping anyone from watching the show. Critics are preparing their “best of the year” lists and struggling to find something new to say.

Pre-production is beginning on the show’s second season. People have forgotten to cancel their two-week free trial, and are now paying the streaming service a monthly fee. Rival streaming services are developing new shows in the same setting as the show that is streaming. The company that owns the streaming service is buying the rival streaming services, and its founder and CEO is currently orbiting the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour in a capsule designed specifically for him, a capsule which contains a year’s worth of rations, the fastest available Wi-Fi, and, for some reason, a bulletproof safe.

And still, the show is streaming. People are coming home from a day of work and tension and stress and forced repression of emotions, they have unanswered voice mails from their mothers, they are changing into sweatpants, eating dinner and drinking liquor, selecting the winking-eye logo from a grid of apps. They are sinking deeper into the couch. Breath is slowing, eyelids are drooping. Sleep is happening. The screen is asking, “Are you still watching?” and you are.