This weekend I stained a fence in my backyard - and it showed the visceral reaction we seem to share toward movies and television. As I went through the motions, they words 'UP, DOWN!' kept repeating inside my head. It was as if I was Daniel and Miagi was in my head. I could hear the words plain as day.
At the end of the day, I was sore - and not better at karate than I was at the beginning of the project. Karate Kid, you lied to me! Okay, not really. It's not like I went down to a Karate Tournament expecting a win because I knew how to stain a fence, I would have had my ass kicked very quickly. But it reminds me that there are some things I still like about movies and television.
For the last several years, I had watched as an almost outsider to my own life, a surreal existence of a lessening enjoyment of both movies and television. So complete was my withdrawal from episodic television that between March 31, 2014 and just this week, I did not watch any version of episodic television.
That was the last episode of How I Met Your Mother. The only other show I had watched regularly was The Walking Dead. Where that show failed was its deepening need for more gore and less on the side of making it an intellectual experience. HIMYM, of course, was simply a guilty pleasure; a cast of characters I wanted to see come together and finalize a story arc that had started to get too played out.
After that, nothing really seemed to grab my attention long enough to get invested. I guess that is the trauma that is adult ADD.
I attempted (on multiple occasions) to watch Game of Thrones. I just could not get into it. I think that the first time I watched it, I must have been 40 minutes in and I still had no clue he names of any characters. How am I supposed to watch a show that does not get me invested? Maybe it is because I am not really from the video game era. I guess I sort of am; was in junior high and high school when the industry began to explode. Despite that brief history, i was not a guy who played them much, if at all, and I was never really enthralled with the fantasy genre of books, games or movies. No. I never watched Lord of the Rings; or Harry Potter. I never read the books either. They just never appealed to me.
So, with Game of Thrones out, and any series that seemed to glorify criminality, I was stuck. There would be occasional shows that might catch my attention for a short time span, but not until I started to watch The Last Kingdom did I actually get excited about episodic television.
For me, it really boils down to the reality that, despite being fictional, it has a basis in reality as historical fiction. There is the same gray and white bleakness as Game of Thrones, maybe even more bleak; but its purpose is reality and its story seems more natural to me. There is no violence simply for the purpose of violence (what we call in the internet medium 'click bait). Through the first few episodes, there is little to no gratuitous sex or nudity. There has been much integral to the plot.
For me, this show hits everything I really love. There are characters you will love, characters you will hate and some where the distinction is not so clear. It creates thought provoking dialogue and keeps you invested.
For me, finally, there is something worth watching that gets me to look forward to watching television outside of sports. If you have not yet watched it - give it a shot.
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