Welcome again to We Have Always Live the Kraken, a pop culture blog transmitted directly to you from the belly of the beast. Here in the Notes we’ll show you this month’s posting schedule, but first, here are some thoughts.
The streaming world is a weird place right now. After years of Netflix existing at the top of the mountain (even if Hulu and Amazon made this closer than you would think), it is finally finding itself having to face true challenges now that traditional powers have gotten their shit together and started taking back their own content. No more coasting off of Friends and The Office for Netflix, as soon it will have to more or less start standing on its own. In response to this, Netflix has been releasing more original content than ever, but at the same time, they have also been canceling more shows than ever. The trend is especially noticeable after their shows release a second season, which is, well, a pattern for a reason. All of this means we are finally starting to see the downsides of the subscriber TV model. Some of these downsides are more obvious: TV is becoming more and more fragmented, being able to view everything on one platform is long gone, and the cord-cutter model is finally going to force people to make hard choices if they don’t want their TV bill to balloon to cable-esque prices.
Tuca & Bertie didn’t even get a second season, because reasons.
The unforeseen impact was how much it would affect the traditional long-running aspect of TV shows. Netflix sees little value in a third season or more of many of its shows because those additional seasons do not add to the subscriber base, which is all that matters to Netflix’s bottom line. The valuation of Netflix has long been based on how many new subscribers it gets, and not on how much money it makes (because, umm, Netflix is spending a lot of money), so generating new customers is seen as far more important than keeping current customers satisfied. This downside is concerning, because considering the power that Netflix has, you have to wonder if the days of long-running shows might be numbered–and if so, if that might mean a lot of creative people will head back to movies if it turns out they won’t be able to tell the kind of long-form stories that typify many of the best shows in the Golden Age of TV (unless their show ends up being a monster hit, like Stranger Things). Now I will admit that this is all a bit of me being Chicken Little, but the flux of the streaming industry is starting to create ripples that no one expected. We should probably enjoy the current era of peak TV as much as we can, because the waves of change are coming, and a lot of them are not looking good…
-David
We have been experiencing a bit of turbulence here in the Kraken, so while we handle that, we have gone deep into the depths of the monster to bring you these greatest hits for you to relive once again.
The world has not been in a good place for a while, but go back to see the time Kyu used Harry Potter to talk about how we deal with the terror around us.
How I Met Your Mother ended five years ago, but David’s rage will never go away. So go back and see the genesis of this rage as David dealt with his many emotions after the controversial ending to How I Met Your Mother.
We all love Hidden Levels, so take some time to go back and look at Matt’s first entry, Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure.
Catch of the Week Month:
Each and every week the residents here in the Kraken will offer one recommendation for the week that we think you all would enjoy. It might be a movie. It might be a book. Who knows? This is your… Catch of the Week Month.
David: Netflix has a lot of issues these days, but even if it doesn’t seem to want to extend any show past two seasons, it is still letting some weird shows make it to air. The latest of these offerings is Wu Assassins. This show feels in a lot of ways like what Iron Fist could have been, if the people who made Iron Fist had known what the hell they were doing. Wu Assassins is a great mix of goofy, cool, and exciting. The fight scenes are a lot of fun and the show isn’t shy about making each battle brutal and fun. Who knows if this show will get more than one season, but it is a lot of fun so you should enjoy what is there while you can.
Kyu: This month, like David, I’m also recommending a Netflix show, which only goes to show that there’s no escaping the monoculture. That said, Mindhunter is definitely one of Netflix’s most interesting oddities–a gritty, darkly comic piece of historical fiction about the inception and early days of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, whose three founding members essentially invented the science of criminal profiling. That they came to their at the time radical, now common insights into the psychology of serial killers (a term they actually invented) by interviewing actual convicted multiple murderers is what gives the show its best sequences and its thrillingly conflicted sense of both fascination and repulsion. About the same historical figures who formed the basis for Thomas Harris’ Lector characters (Mindhunter‘s Holden Ford is the equivalent of real person John Douglas and Harris’ Will Graham), Mindhunter often feels like an ersatz version of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal (actually, Hannibal is an ersatz version of this, a swooning, grand guignol exploration of the emotions Mindhunter keeps locked and peering out from behind its commitment to realism). As much as I love Hannibal‘s luscious visuals and romanticized horrors, I also really enjoy this less outre take on similar material, which bears the stylistic hallmarks of Executive Producer David Fincher, bringing a real Zodiac feeling to the proceedings (Fincher directed 7 of the show’s 19 episodes to date–I wish he’d done them all, but at least the other directors do a good job evoking his look and feel). Mindhunter is talky and intellectual; it really is interested in what makes serial killers tick, and it doesn’t try and add thrills to make those ideas more traditionally dramatic. It trusts them to be interesting for the audience, too, and it also does a good job of subtly using the characters to help you consider the emotional and moral implications of these ideas. But the real joy of the show is that it’s an actor’s showcase, not just for the “guest stars” bringing real life characters like Ed Kemper (the Co-Ed Killer), Richard Speck, Son of Sam, and Charles Manson on for what are generally single scene showstoppers, but also for the main trio, all arguably giving career best performances: Jonathan Groff’s intuitive, fascinated young agent, as much driven by his ego as any of his interviewees; Holt McCallany as Ford’s tightly coiled senior partner (a thrillingly subtle and physical performance, maybe only rivalled by McCallany’s turn in the excellent FX one-and-done boxing series Lights Out), and last but not least, Anna Torv, whose chilly, closeted psychologist feels a world away from her leading role as a very different FBI agent in Fringe. Combining the best aspects of historical fiction, intelligent crime procedural, and interpersonal drama, Mindhunter is not to be missed. You know, if you like that sort of thing.
That’s it for this month’s notes. The Kraken is currently detoxing from all the negativity in the world, so we recommend you stay inside, as anyone outside will be infected with toxin whose effects include violence, insanity, and a disturbingly intense obsession with the Cats trailer.