Spoiler alert! I don't like spoilers. There now you don't have to read any of this blog at all. Don't you feel better? Didn't I save you a ton of time? Aren't you ever so grateful? No? Okay, then keep on reading.
I like reality T.V. I know, I know, it's bad for my brain, it's the downfall of Western Civilization, it's one step on the path to our doom...what ever...I like it. I watch an odd ball collection of them. The main stays, Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, The Biggest Loser. And then an odd collection of others, Deadliest Catch, Dirty Jobs, Salon Takeover, Dancing with the Stars, My Life of the D List. I am sure there are others that I am not thinking of right now.
This season I am even watching The Bachelor. Now, this is not one I normally watch. The concept of it bugs me. One person gets to date a lot of people who only get to date this one person and WATCH as they date all of the others. Ummm...no thanks. But this year it got me. I wanted to see how they handled one of the potential pool dating someone else as well. Would they see the irony in telling her that she could only date the bachelor while he dated 24 other women or would they shame her and send her on her way? I figured I would sit in for an episode and see how it turned out, but along the way I found out that a friend of Megan's was on the show this season, so I wanted to see how she did. Turns out she has done very well and is one of the final two, so I was kind of in it until the end.
Now, living on the West Coast it's a real trick to being able to see a finale show without knowing how it ends. Prime time doesn't even start until 8. By dinnertime my friends on the East Coast have seen the finale and know how it ends. What this means is all internet connections have to be off. No Facebook status checks, no Twitter feeds, not even MSN can be on or else I will know how the show ends before it even starts for me. I call this inadvertent spoilers. Frustrating for sure, but nothing malicious behind them, it's just people want to talk about what they have just seen. I figure it's pretty much up to me to not look at anything that can give it away since people tend to forget those of us out west who haven't seen the ending yet.
But the Spoilers that drive me crazy, that make me angry are the ones who are posting just to show that they know something you don't and can ruin your viewing pleasure because of it. There was one year that the list of order of finish for Survivor was leaked. I turned on the radio one morning to a local show and they were reading a list of the current Survivors on the show. I thought, well this is interesting, they are going to talk about the show...nope, they were reading the order in which everyone got voted off. Worst season ever for me. There was no drama, not investment, no pleasure. I knew who was going that night. I knew who was going the next week. I knew who the final two were. Boring. And why did they read off the list? Because they could. Because it would show they were in the know. That they were smarter than everyone else. Gee...thanks...
I used to subscribe to Entertainment Weekly. I was one of their original subscribers. Over the past few years they have gotten more and more into publishing spoilers in articles. They even hired a writer whose entire job was to publish spoilers of T.V. shows and movies. I had gotten fairly deft at avoiding them in the magazine but the final straw for me came when they published a spoiler on the cover of the fall T.V. preview two years ago. Why? What was the point? To show how cool they are? How in the know? Again...gee...thanks...
And people will post spoilers any place and every place. The Bachelor I was mentioning earlier? I have known since the second episode who one of the final two was going to be. Read it in a comments section on a blog about the first episode. Someone just posted it. So every episode though I hoped that person was wrong and there would be at least a little suspense, I knew who at least one of the women getting a rose was. I know who is going home this Sunday on The Amazing Race. Same thing, someone just blurted it out on a comments section for something unrelated. When they were called on it by another poster their reply was.."It was already out there, it's your fault you didn't already know." Seriously? Gee...thanks...
And didn't there used to be an art to reviewing movies? Where the reviewer gave you an opinion about the movie without telling you all of the important plot points? What would The Sixth Sense and The Crying Game been like if every reviewer gave away the twists? Now instead of review it seems like most of the time we get a recap. I don't want a recap, I want to watch the movie and be interested in the story, not knowing exactly how it's going to turn out. If I am going to pay that much for a ticket I would really like to be transported by the story, not sitting there knowing not to get too attached to the main character's best friend because he dies in a freak accident that you would have never seen coming...that is unless you read the movie review...gee...thanks...
When Stephen King wrote and released The Green Mile he did it as a serialized collection. You had to wait for each new section. When he released the first section he said he did it that way to prevent people from spoiling the ending for themselves. Seems it drives him crazy when people turn to the last page of a book before they get there. Just to check the ending. So this way he could control that and keep people from seeing how it ended before he wanted them to. Pretty ingenious. I just wish there was a way I could do that with everyone. Stop turning to the last page and reading it out loud to me. I don't want to know. I want to be surprised. I want to experience the ending, not anticipate the ending. Is that really too much to ask?
Here's another spoiler alert for you...I am going to touch on this again in a blog sometime down the road about the internet and social skills. Now you can wait for it. Gee...thanks... ;-)
Well said!
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