I’m one of those people who gets really irritated when even the potential of a movie/TV spoiler arises, and consuming media is becoming very difficult. I just don’t get it. For a long time, reviewers, ranging from professionals to some random author in a forum, respected the rule that the viewer should be able to experience the production fully, with little to no foreshadowing of the plot, if that’s what they want. But today… good luck navigating the news, discussion sites, streaming services, and media platforms.
It has become normal that your streaming service will preface the episode with a revelatory image and a succinct summary of the main plot. Who wants that? I’ve become skilled at navigating menus with my eyes covered except for a pinhole to see the episode numbers.
This evening, while watching a riveting, multi-season show, I was really curious about who played one of the supporting characters. I made the amateur move of starting to type the character’s name on the web and was hit with an autocomplete that included, “…played the role of xxxx on xxxx until he was killed by a terrorist attack.” And this sucks because now I’m looking for things I shouldn’t know about, and cutting off hypothetical plot lines because I know the character will die. It is altogether less enjoyable.
There is a statute of limitation on spoilers… I get that. I don’t tip-toe around “Luke, I’m your father” these days. But we’re all drowning in media, and folks are starting shows years after they originally aired, so it would be good if there was at least some effort not to overtly shove spoilers to people at every turn.
S2E3 “The Homecoming” 55 minutes… that’ll do just fine, thanks.