This summer has been an exciting one for TV fans. Halt and Catch Fire found a new gear by embracing its feminine side, Rectify somehow managed to top its incredible first two seasons, and Hannibal aired its most experimental and bold arcs yet. Several of the freshman comedies that made 2014 a banner year for the genre returned in fine form and Mr. Robot and UnREAL burst onto the scene, while the fascinating Sense8 flew under the radar. Fans of the criminally under-watched Halt and Catch Fire, Rectify, and Hannibal were likely unsurprised by their growth and creativity, but for many, this has been a summer of discovery.
@ChelseaKH13 no. My sister keeps telling me to watch it but I would have to start with the pilot & I don’t have the time to catch up
— Clarissa (@clarissa373) August 9, 2015
It’s been difficult if not impossible to keep up with the shows that have broken through into the cultural conversation, let alone those only threatening to do so, strong series championed by the few critics who’ve been able to find time for them (Catastrophe and Difficult People come to mind). And yet, despite the clear abundance of quality programming out there, enough so that one couldn’t possibly keep up with it all, one of TV fandom’s most frustrating fallacies continues to be presented as fact: the outdated concept that the only way to truly appreciate a television series is to start from the pilot. With so much intriguing, entertaining TV constantly being released, fans and critics alike need to abandon completionism, set aside their fears and just dive in; I’ve been swimming in the deep end for the past few years and let me tell you, the water’s great. I used to adhere to the axiom that true fans of the medium start TV shows from the beginning, that even if a series struggles for its first two seasons, those episodes are worth powering through if the show figures itself out in season three. I had the luxury of approaching television that way, back when I was in undergrad and critics all seemed to agree on the five Must See shows of any given season. But starting The Televerse opened my eyes to the myriad series I was missing out on, ones I just didn’t have the time to catch up with. Eventually, in the fall of 2012, I broke down and allowed myself to start series mid-run. That season, I watched Kristina battle cancer on Parenthood and sobbed my eyes out. I watched Cooper and Lucero get held hostage on Southland and sat in stunned silence. That summer, I laughed my butt off and toasted to Spanakopita with The Venture Bros. And I wouldn’t have experienced any of that had I followed the rule I hear pontificated from both critics and fans: “Well, you have to start from the beginning.”
See these “An episode roadmap for beginners” articles? Start with the pilot and work your way chronologically to the end. NO SHORTCUTS.
— Mark Donaldson (@Oldmankrondas) August 22, 2015
This pet peeve reared its ugly head again earlier this summer, when buzz built around season two of Halt and Catch Fire. I tried out the series when it premiered—after Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, and The Fall, I will watch just about anything with Lee Pace—but was turned off by its familiar central character. Skeptical, I ignored the advice of every critic I’d heard discuss the show and did not go back and watch the last few episodes of season one to prep. And you know what? I loved the second season and felt utterly comfortable with the series, able to intuit the connections between the characters and the shared history the rest of the audience may be aware of, but that I don’t know to miss. I may eventually go back and watch season one, now that I’m invested in the characters, but I also may not. I had a wonderful time with Halt and Catch Fire season two, and for the moment, I’m happy to leave it at that.
Too often, critics and TV fans don’t give viewers enough credit; we don’t give ourselves enough credit. There’s a pervading sense of FOMO—fear of missing out—that propagates completionism. What if we miss or misinterpret a Meaningful Glance? What if we merely like an episode, but our caught-up friends love it? How can we know we’re seeing everything there is to see, if we haven’t watched everything there is to watch? The short answer is that we can’t. But I’d argue that’s the case with most art most of the time. To understand everything a painting could offer, one would need to dive into the artist’s life and work, putting the painting in question in context with their development as an artist and changing relationship with the medium. Yet few demand that art fans experience Monet’s 250 or so Water Lilies paintings in sequence. We don’t require music fans to listen to the first five tracks of Revolver before letting them hear “Yellow Submarine” for the first time. We don’t expect film fans to catch every Marvel movie before we’ll take their opinion on the latest entry seriously. So why are we so precious about television?
The idea of TV as a crafted experience, one with a strict beginning, middle, and end, is a recent phenomenon. For decades, there were no DVRs, no box sets. If you missed an episode’s original airing, and you hadn’t pre-set the VCR (after they were invented), you had to hope to stumble across the episode years later in reruns. And if a friend told you something special was happening Tuesdays at 8pm (7pm Central), the best you could hope for was to tune in next week and pester your friend to catch you up. Television has become more serialized over the years, yes, but it is still a story told in installments, series broken down into seasons, seasons broken down into episodes. If you’re able to start a show from its pilot, that’s great. But if not, if you were too busy catching up with Mad Men before its last season to watch Playing House season one, let me be the first to tell you season two is a blast, and you should dive in with whatever episode they air next week, then catch up with the rest when you have time. If you’ve heard buzz about Louie, but you go to your local library and season one is already checked out, grab season two or three. If you weren’t the biggest fan of Rick and Morty season one, I wasn’t either. But season two has been fantastic. Don’t slog through a season you’re not interested in before you let yourself enjoy what has been one of the most consistent, funniest comedies of the year.
@REColley Well of course. If you watch any show, you should always start with the pilot. If you really care about the story, that is.
— Lindsay Mead (@Lindsay_Mead) April 2, 2015
The argument that one should start a series from its pilot, the tone that creeps into people’s voices when they say, “But really, you should go back and watch it all…” has become increasingly grating to me. It’s fan-shaming, presenting a correct way to view or experience art and dismissing the opinions of anyone with a different approach. (People rarely pull out the, “Oh, but if you’d seen season two…” argument when a critic praises a show they’re late to the party on.) Most people don’t have the time to marathon every show from the beginning. Most people aren’t sitting around, ready to binge-watch the most recent season of a show they’ve been trying to catch up with when the network to finally releases it all of a month before the next season premieres. Most people want to be part of the cultural conversation, and they deserve to have their voices heard just as much as the completionist next to them. I have seen all of Doctor Who, from its 1963 pilot to the missing, reconstructed episodes to last year’s Christmas special. But that doesn’t make my take on the show somehow more valid than that of a fan who started with NuWho or who will start this coming season.
As storytelling on TV has grown increasingly serialized and complicated, “Previously On…” intros have become standard. Writers constantly hold viewers’ hands, using context clues to remind the audience of plot or character details relevant to the episode at hand. Trailers recapping shows’ previous seasons and catching up potential new viewers are plentiful. In the age of Peak TV, in the Platinum Age, completionism is a battle that’s already been lost. No one can watch everything, even critics who spend their day jobs struggling to stay ahead of the constant waves of releases. It’s time we stop pretending that there’s a correct way to watch television, stop giving ourselves homework and FOMO complexes, and start enjoying the wealth of interesting programming at our disposal, regardless of episode number. In this spirit, PopOptiq TV will be running a series of articles this month, recommendations from our writers of shows viewers should stop hesitating about, stop worrying about catching up with, and just start watching. There’s a world of TV out there. Let’s explore it together.