TV Features

Binge-watching Challenge: Start a Show at Season 3

It's possible to spare ourselves the slog of shows when they're just starting out.

Quarantine: when jobs have either been lost or relegated to the living room, wherein social functions are limited to Zoom, wherein the 24-hours in a day can really be felt.

With less to physically fill the time, the time remains unfilled. Fortunately, sequestered humans have never had such a bevy of entertainment options available to them. But that kind of freedom can be paralyzing. Never has there been a better time for binge-watching, but what are we to binge? And how?

Since all this free-time demands discipline, here's an unconventional suggestion: Pick one of the all-time great shows, something you've always wanted to watch but couldn't find the motivation nor time to do so, and start not at the beginning, but at season three instead. Whether it's a comedy or a drama or simply something you've put off watching because the plot is too involved or the show is too hyped, ignore the first two seasons entirely, and fall into a world that's already in motion. Using our knowledge of television in general, and by tapping into the cultural conversation of characters and references, we can spare ourselves the slow starts of seasons one and two, and get right to the meat of the matter. Why sit around waiting for a show to find itself? Why settle for less than the best?

First seasons are often uneven or uncertain, anyway. Second seasons are often better and more compelling, but shows that make it to season three emerge with a clear tone and complete characters: two necessities for any show with long-term success.

Examples abound of shows finding themselves in their third seasons. Arguably, the greatest comedies of the 21st century are The Office and Parks and Recreation, though contenders such as It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Curb Your Enthusiasm are important to the discussion, as well. As for dramatic examples, look to the Olympic podium of TV's Golden Era: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Mad Men.

Mad Men Season 3 Promo PhotoAMC

A weighted-review aggregation site like Metacritic is not the law, but it is useful. The numbers almost universally favor third seasons and beyond. Parks and Rec improves in score from a 58 in season one to an 83 in season three, a change signifying an ascension from "mixed or average reviews" to "Universal Acclaim," in the critics' words. The Office's highest overall score is season three's 85. Breaking Bad starts solidly with its first two season garnering scores of 73 and 84, but in its final three earns marks of 89, 96, and 99, an unprecedented run of greatness. Game of Thrones' two highest marks of 91 and 94 are for seasons three and four, respectively. Mad Men is the lone outlier of the bunch, as its second season outscores its third by a single point. However, its fourth season, ruled a 92, is the series' high-point. Why? Shows generally hit their strides in season three.

First, character development peaks at season three. First seasons tend to be myopic about their characters, hoping that closeness will lead viewers to love them. Season two is the experimentation room, wherein worlds shift, and season three is the fruit of that labor, with confident characters and expanded worlds.

By season three, the main characters have been poked and prodded for two full seasons, experimented on until their truest selves have been revealed. How? Conflict. Characters are made complete, in mold and mindset, through consistent conflict. They are built through what are essentially a series of thought experiments: How would x react if y? A byproduct of such conflict is a fleshing out of a show's world. Conflict requires fresh subjects to be placed before a character, be they fresh faces, strange circumstances, or unfamiliar situations.

For instance, two of Parks and Rec's most iconic characters, Ben Wyatt and Chris Traeger aren't introduced until the very end of season two, where they immediately begin foiling Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones, the series leads. Breaking Bad's first two seasons lack the series' big bad, Gus Fring, creator of the fictional restaurant, Los Pollos Hermanos, the logo of which adorns the show's most popular merchandise; yet, it's only introduced in concept at the tail-end of the second season. The Office changes dramatically in season three, adding mainstay Andy Dwyer, flirting with a young Rashida Jones, and cementing Jim and Pam's relationship, which was until then a typical will-they-won't-they situation. Once resolved, it formed the literal backbone upon which the show is built.


Once they got together, Jim-and-Pam as a concept burst outside the confines of the show they were in, taking up real-estate in the general pop culture consciousness. The great shows, the all-timers, the ones you really should be watching in this quarantine time, share this Jungian trait. One doesn't need to have watched Seinfeld to understand the terms "shrinkage" or "close-talker." "We were on a break," is just part of our dialect.

Though this principle doesn't inform our viewing of many great shows, it does so with some of our touchstone comedies, like the aforementioned It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Curb your Enthusiasm. Shows of this format don't have one cohesive story pulling them along; it's possible, if not normal, to jump around to the great episodes through seasons, without care for continuity. Once it's known that the characters in Always Sunny are narcissists who work at a bar, it's easy to understand any episode, to jump in without further background. Ditto Curb, where Larry David is culturally understood to be an off-putting schmuck, and that's all one must know for maximum enjoyment.

Because the DNA of these two shows, and their dramatic brethren like Grey's Anatomy and NCIS, is accessible via collective unconscious, we culturally understand that it's unnecessary to sit and watch every single episode in a row. We know enough from our general human wanderings that we can skip the fluff and enjoy the standout performances and pieces, allowing superfluous details to slowly fill themselves in, as they always do.



Which of the truly great shows don't also already exist in our cultural consciousness? Nobody goes in blind to any piece of art nowadays, so it's hard to think of even one. Everyone knows Tony Soprano is a gangster in therapy. Lost takes place on an island post-plane crash. Jon Snow in Game of Thrones is a bastard, and if that isn't abundantly clear, they'll say it five or six times an episode.

No show is ever entered into truly blind. Between our bevy of previous cultural knowledge and the practice we've had in consuming other content en media res, it's possible to spare ourselves the slog of shows when they're just starting out. We've just never strayed from the unimaginative formula that shows are best began at the beginning. But that's clinging to tradition alone. Shows in season three will contain characters at their most compelling, jokes at their most pointed, worlds at their most alive. The show itself will be easier to enjoy, and that enjoyment will come quicker. Is that not the point? Maximum enjoyment, minimum commitment.

And when it's all over, when you love these people desperately and want so bad to live in their world for just a few minutes more, you can rejoice! For there are two more seasons for you to watch, saved, untouched. Their growing pains will seem quaint, their iffy characterizations cute. And the exercise alone will make you feel powerful, able to ground yourself in a world in movement.

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Did Season 2 Ruin "The End of the F*cking World"?

Did the show do itself a disservice by not ending after Season 1?

The End of the F*cking World

Netflix

If you're a fan of Charles Forsman's graphic novel, The End of the F*cking World, then you were probably at least a little pissed off to see they were making a second season of the Netflix show based on the comic.

It's impossible to discuss the second season of this Netflix dramedy without spoiling the end of the first season, so if you have yet to catch up on this highly bingeable show, we recommend you stop reading now.

Essentially, Season 1 ends the same way the graphic novel does, with Alyssa and James finally getting tracked down by the police and James subsequently getting shot while trying to save Alyssa. In the novel, that moment of supreme sacrifice is how the story ends, and it's made clear James did not survive the encounter. But, as James says flatly in a voice over at the beginning of Season 2, "It was a fitting end, a doomed love story. A perfect tragedy. And then I didn't die." Indeed, viewers soon learn that writer Charlie Covell left his source material behind completely in writing the second installment of the series and James not only survived in this version, but soon reenters Alyssa's life.

End of the F*cking worldAn excerpt from the original graphic novel. End of the F*cking World


This left many viewers, this writer included, feeling conflicted. On one hand, the first season of the oddball series was a nearly perfect set of episodes. Deeply moving and hyper-realistic almost to the point of surrealism, it was a triumph in the genre of coming-of-age stories. It was made all the more perfect by the seemingly definitive ending: a bold, tragic end that tied up the story neatly and, in its original form, left no room for a sequel. On the other hand, saying goodbye to the deeply alive characters of Alyssa and James seemed unimaginable. But maybe that hard goodbye was part of what made the first season so perfect.

But then, it turned out it wasn't goodbye at all. And as much as we were happy to learn we'd get a whole other season of The End of the F*cking World, the very fact of the second season cast a shadow on the excellence of the first. Summarily, the second season has a difficult task to perform: prove to its audience that its existence is worth the loss of our perfect, tragic, poetic ending.

So, the question is: Did it succeed? Well...yes and no.

First, it's impossible to overstate the brilliance of this show's script. The inclusion of the character's inner monologues combined with the sparse, direct, and deadpan interpersonal dialogue serve to immerse the audience in a story both bizarre and deeply familiar. The audience gets the feeling that, thanks to these soliloquies, they know Alyssa and James just as well as they know themselves; but, given their adolescence and various struggles, that's to say hardly at all. Indeed, the combination of impulsivity and child-like innocence with the very adult grief and trauma these young characters bear creates a heartbreakingly realistic portrait of adolescence. All of this remains true in Season 2.

But, in many ways, Season 2 explores areas Season 1 already conquered. A third central character comes in the form of Bonnie (played by Naomi Ackie), a college-aged woman determined to exact revenge against Alyssa and James for killing her "boyfriend," Clive, whom James stabbed when he tried to rape Alyssa in Season 1. Bonnie is quite obviously "strange," as Alyssa puts it, and we learn in the first episode that this is at least in part because of an abusive childhood. While Ackie's performance is brilliant, she adds little besides a central source of conflict. Much of her character seems to be an exploration of themes Season 1 already covered: generational trauma, unhealthy attachments, and anger.

Bonnie (Naomi Ackie)Netflix

Still, in the final confrontation of the season we see James and Alyssa held at gunpoint in a diner by Bonnie, and what transpires is a scene about trauma and forgiveness as effecting as anything that's ever been on TV. When it's finally revealed to Bonnie that Clive tried to rape Alyssa, and Bonnie insists that they "still need to be punished," Alyssa delivers a brief monologue that punches all the harder for her character's usually sarcastic, deadpan manner. "You think we weren't punished? I'm always in that house," Alyssa confesses. "I'm always in that room. I can't get out. Maybe I did some things I shouldn't have, but I didn't deserve that." Finally, we see Bonnie's loathing and grief turn on herself, a poignant testament to the self-loathing inherent in vengeance, and watch as Alyssa and James stop her from ending her own life. Ultimately, audiences are given a much more interesting antagonist in Bonnie than they had with Clive, a serial rapist and murderer, in Season 1. Bonnie is as much a victim of Clive's cruelty as Alyssa is, and as such, she is by no means a true villain, but rather exists in a grey area of sympathy and antagonism that is ultimately more effective in the narrative of the show.

Much like last season, there are also moments of extraordinary wisdom. When James is rhetorically asked by a police man "What can you do?" in regards to Bonnie's mental illness, James responds, simply, "Well, a bit more." It's this sense of hope in the face of overwhelming nihilism that this show captures so beautifully. Perhaps acknowledgement of just how f*cked the world is, while allowing a sneaking suspicion to creep in that maybe the sun will rise some day—that maybe holding hands is worth doing even as the world falls in around you—is exactly what we need from our art in 2019.

While the critic in me wants to argue that Season 2 should never have existed, if I'm being honest, I'm just glad I got to spend a little more time trying to figure it all out alongside James and Alyssa.

Netflix