Rehearsals part 2: TV Trials & Consumptive Complicity

When the latest Emmy nominations were announced two weeks ago the lineup mostly comprised the usual suspects of buzzy TV titles that have dominated online discourse over the past year. However, one nominee stood out to me precisely because it had been entirely absent from my media awareness radar: something called Jury Duty, which apparently … Continue reading Rehearsals part 2: TV Trials & Consumptive Complicity

Rehearsals: The Fielder Method & Meta-Media Mania

Last summer Nathan Fielder’s new TV show The Rehearsal premiered on HBO. This was Fielder’s first television program since his Comedy Central show Nathan For You aired its final season in 2017, and fans of his unique blend of reality TV tropes and cringe comedy were eager to see what he would come up with … Continue reading Rehearsals: The Fielder Method & Meta-Media Mania

Mediated Memories & Nostalgic Obsolescence

I spent much of the spring 2020 early pandemic period like many other people, holed up at home binging streaming content. It’s an interval of the past two years that I recall fondly: having nowhere to go and nothing better to do than consume entire seasons or series of television. During that initial period of … Continue reading Mediated Memories & Nostalgic Obsolescence

TV still sucks, we should still complain about hipsters, your job shouldn’t exist

In an article for Salon, Alexander Zaitchik assails the current "golden age" of television, and the resultant binge watching, spoiler fearing, TV-obsessed (pop) culture we're living in: None of this could be happening at a worse time. According to the latest S.O.S. from climate science, we have maybe 15 years to enact a radical civilizational … Continue reading TV still sucks, we should still complain about hipsters, your job shouldn’t exist