Where's The Netflix We Deserve?
By Mike Silva
The year was 2010, sometime in the spring. It was a Wednesday afternoon and I didn't have class for the rest of the day (I meant college class, but however literally you want to take that statement is fine since I was probably just sitting around in boxers with the TV remote lost somewhere between couch cushions anyway).
It was a different time and a different me. Between binges of fast food and relentless beginnings and endings to countless Madden franchises, I spent most of my days lying on the couch. My how times have changed…
I digress.
Anyone can attest to how terrible daytime TV programming is. It’s abysmal. As a kid, it was straightforward:
You miss school, you start your morning huddled over a bowl “Cocoa Pebbles” while watching “The Price Is Right.” You can practically cue up simultaneously sipping the rest of your chocolaty, milky, soggy remnants of cereal just as Bob Barker’s declaring someone won “a new carrrrrr!”
Then you watch some of PBS’s “Zoom.” You might throw on some Cartoon Network. A peanut butter-jelly sandwich lunch accompanies Maury and all his guests with all their problems. Just riveting television.
As a 21-year-old, nothing changed. 10ish years after elementary school and the same garbage is on all 100+ accessible TV channels? Isn’t this the land of opportunity? WTF?!
Alas, I found the oasis in the desert, a solution to my TV content problem: I discovered Netflix.
Discover may be the wrong word since, at this point, Netflix had been around for 13 years and had developed into a pretty popular service throughout my college tenure. But I hadn’t actually used it before.
The day I realized I could link my Xbox to a Netflix account and stream directly to my TV set was probably on par with the guy that first figured out the thumb-disappearing magic trick as the greatest discovery ever, minus the thumbs.
I was all in. I scrolled through hundreds of movie titles. There were movies I’d loved that I hadn’t seen in forever, movies I was curious about but never got around to watching, movies I heard about and wanted to check out, etc.
Title after title, I started building my queue. It was kind of like those franchises I got so accustomed to building in Madden:
You have your foundational piece: Inception
Your boom-or-bust pick: Drive
Your seasoned vet: The Warriors
Your “I’m not really sure what I’m getting here but I have a good feeling about this based on the system’s arbitrary rating logarithm”: Kick-Ass
It was wonderful… until it wasn’t.
Before long, I lost interest in Madden. It was a sad (but honestly, very necessary) day when I no longer cared anymore. It was always the same thing: pick a random team, trade away my stars for draft picks, simulate the first season with scrubs, earn a higher spot in draft order, kill it in the draft, sign some free agents, maybe add an old veteran just to “get them a ring," all to finish 19-0 and win the Super Bowl… only to start all over again.
(Side note: So ridiculous I was looking for a sympathetic end to digital football players’ careers...)
In a funny way, that’s ultimately what became of Netflix: same shit, different day.
After a while, my queue was a mess. My number was somewhere in the triple digits. It felt like homework to maintain it and I would struggle with that innate human need for crossing items off a list.
Another common headache: I’d find a movie outside my queue I’d want to watch immediately, only to have a feeling of infidelity to the hundred other titles I was neglecting.
Even with all those Netflix issues, the pros mostly outweighed the cons. The content was primo. Great movies ranging from critically-acclaimed, to indie favorites, to classics were plentiful… until they weren’t.
Wtf happened?! Mediocrity everyone!
When Netflix decided to divide the all-in-one service for a pair of separate services (instant-streaming vs. in-your-mailbox DVD delivery), everyone got pissed, and rightfully so.
The next domino to fall was losing a partnership with Starz, which saw thousands of quality titles fall off. And while a deal with Epix brought in something decent, it wasn’t exclusive. Amazon Video piggybacked the same content.
My answer to shitty television was having great movies to watch instantly, but now, Netflix became an aggregate of shitty movies. I didn’t sign up for a replacement-level Maury substitute. I signed up for a movie theatre at home, on demand.
Right around the same time I was regularly watching straight-to-Redbox caliber movies on Netflix, life as we know it was changing from a screening point-of-view.
The rise of the “Golden Age” of television was upon us. The renowned HBO classic “The Wire” aged like a fine wine. The smashing success that was “Breaking Bad” was right in the thick of its run, as was another AMC drama: “Mad Men.”
Netflix took noticed and followed suit. Not only were tons of award-winning TV dramas (AMC included) added to the library, we also saw the rise of Netflix Originals. First there was “House of Cards.” Then there was “Orange Is the New Black.” “Daredevil,” “Narcos,” “Luke Cage,” “Stranger Things,” “Black Mirror,” etc.
We were in the midst of a screen content paradigm shift. Kind of like the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, the long running dominance of Silver Screen over Small Screen came to an end.
Let’s fast-forward to today. I no longer play Madden, nor do I only get up from the couch to eat cheeseburgers. It’s now quite the opposite, really. I’m in the best shape of my life, I don’t eat junk food, I have more energy than I did 10 years ago, and I’m constantly on the move.
The point is, I no longer have much time for Netflix and I have nowhere near the amount of free time I wasted in college. But I do find time to occasionally watch some things.
I’ll be the first to tell you how much I love all the shows I listed above.
(As an aside, my short-list for best TV dramas, not unlike most the world’s list: 1. Breaking Bad, 2. Sopranos, 3. Mad Men, 4. True Detective: Season 1, 5. The Wire, but this debate is for another day.)
I truly love good television. I do. Who doesn’t love good TV? From a series standpoint, Netflix is doing just fine. There isn’t much debate there.
What hurts me about Netflix is what brought me to the streaming service in the first place. I wanted a movie theatre at home, not another channel of television shows, albeit great ones. TV shows are an investment.
TV series are a lot like blind dates. You decide to spend time with one based on a friend’s recommendation and you go in with minimal details of what the subject is all about and why you may enjoy yourself.
The first encounter is ambiguous, as there were some things you liked, some things you didn’t, and a lot of unanswered questions. You may decide to invest a little more time looking for answers to some of those unresolved plot holes, or you may just decide this isn’t for you.
After a while, you reach a point where you’ve invested so much time, whether you like what you’re getting or not, you continue doing what you’re doing so you don’t feel like your time was wasted. Sometimes it falls flat, sometimes it’s wonderful.
With movies, though, it’s a quick, one-time thing. You go out for one night and one night only. It’s exciting, it's usually of higher grandiose, it can last up to two hours, and if it was terrible, you’re done with it.
In the real world, having a long-term relationship makes sense. Having a companion for life you can share stories and experiences with is something we should all strive to obtain.
For entertainment purposes, I don’t need a relationship with a TV show. I don’t want to fall victim to an insatiable hunger for binge-watching a show to see what happens next. Give me an hour-and-a-half to two-hour production so I can go on with my everyday life.
I promise I’ll make the movie breakfast the morning after.
The sad truth is this: Because of the overwhelming supply and demand for TV shows, cinema is taking a huge hit. You can’t find good movies anymore. I remember the days where there were so many options convenience usually prevailed.
But now? Maybe one or two titles come out each month that I really want to see. Half the ones I only “kind of” want to see end up on Netflix a few months later and are added right to my queue, among other mediocre movies that I’ll probably never get around to watching.
Maybe I'm being unfair to Netflix. Maybe I should blame all the good actors, directors, and producers, who’ve spurned movie deals to pursue the promise of a couple of seasons of a gripping TV drama. Maybe it’s on the other actors, directors, and producers that are actually contributing to the current slate of bad movies.
I'm not being unfair though. Netflix doesn’t deserve a pass. They’ve put together an amazing lineup of original series. Why can’t they make a couple good movies?
Here are a couple of examples of the crap they’ve packaged together for original movies:
Mercy
IMDB Plot: When four estranged brothers return home to say their last goodbye to their dying mother, Grace, hidden motivations reveal themselves.
Memorable Actors: None (lol) but in seriousness, Bob Benson from “Mad Men” (no clue what his real name is)
Special Correspondents
IMDB Plot: A radio journalist and his technician get in over their heads when they hatch a scheme to fake their own kidnapping during a rebel uprising in South America and hide out in New York instead.
Memorable Actors: Ricky Gervais and Eric Bana, the guy who from the shitty Hulk movie.
True Memoirs of An International Assassin
IMDB Plot: After a publisher changes a writer's debut novel about a deadly assassin from fiction to non-fiction, the author finds himself thrust into the world of his lead character, and must take on the role of his character for his own survival.
Memorable Actors: Kevin James up to his usual bullshit.
Admittedly, I’ve only seen one of the three above, so I can’t judge too much, but come on, do any of those scream “must-see movie”?
“Mercy” was an absolute dumpster fire. Those so-called “hidden motivations” never clearly reveal themselves. It’s a horror film, only it wasn’t scary.
Don’t get me wrong, I love shitty scary movies more than anyone. But this had no redeeming qualities. It was boring, the plot was terrible and unappealing, and the only thing interesting about the movie was this whole secret-society type church that was never fully explained.
Want to know more about this creepy cult? Tough shit. They introduce them and spend the better part of 30 seconds diving into what they’re all about.
Save yourself the time: Everyone dies but the “terminal” mom, the cult was responsible, and the black guy in the beginning was at the helm the whole time. I’d say “spoiler alert” but this movie spoiled itself by existing.
And as for the other two movies I listed… So we’ve basically got Mall Cop after a promotion, along with the shitty Hulk and Ricky Gervais dicking around in New York. Feel like you’ve seen these movies before? You have! These plots are some of the most overdone storylines of all time.
Movies today are either:
a) recycled plots,
b) sequels, or
c) artsy enough to where no one understands what’s going.
We need a movie renaissance. There are some really good ones here and there, but not enough. Until we get the product we want back on the Silver Screen, we need the likes of Netflix and original content producers to step up to the plate.
With the great TV shows Netflix provides, we’re no longer prisoner to crappy network television. But with how bad their original movies are, we’re getting shorted. Big time.
We have the Netflix we need, now if only we could get the Netflix we deserve.