Hey 3.5 Readers.
You know when I was a kid back in the 90’s when everyone walked around dressed like a lumberjack singing heartbreakingly depressing songs, it was customary that if you weren’t around a television during a show’s appointed airing time, you missed it.
Sure, maybe if you were lucky a pal taped it for you. Or maybe you could buy the video cassette for an outrageous price, but by and large, if you missed it then you missed it.
Ergo, if someone who saw the show was kind enough to tell you what the hell happened to your favorite characters, you thanked him or her for doing so.
Thanks to technology, things are all different now.
A) There are more TV shows to watch than ever before.
B) You can watch them whenever you want, wherever you want – in bed on your TV, during your lunch break on your tablet, on the can on your phone.
Holy shit. If your device gets WiFi, you can watch a TV show on it. Hell, you’re probably watching House of Cards right now on the little screen on your coffee maker, aren’t you?
Thus, the great irony:
There are more shows to watch than ever before but no one is allowed to talk about them.
Why?
SPOILERS!
Yes, spoilers. Because now, a person who missed the show when it first aired has options. Hell, many shows don’t even have appointed airing times anymore. Streaming services like Netflix just throw them up for subscribers to watch whenever they want.
And you’d better not talk to anyone about them!
Yes, you’d really love to share your thoughts with your coworkers about Walter White’s transition from humble teacher to criminal mastermind.
You’d better not. Becky in accounting might very well want to start watch Breaking Bad while dropping a deuce on the can six years from now.
Accordingly, it is only right that you be thoroughly rebuked and compared to Hitler if you share a single solitary detail about Walter White’s journey into depravity because doing so will essentially rob Becky of the option of viewing Walter’s journey one day on her own.
It could be any show. Any show at all.
Dexter. Holy shit the ending to that show sucked. But everyone will say you sucked worse than the ending if you tell anyone about it.
Game of Thrones? I swear, by the Old Gods and the New, my f%$king Facebook feed is filled with Nazis demanding blood oaths that no one reveal a word about what happens because “ooo la de da I’m a special person who goes out and has fun on Sunday nights I’m too good to stay in and watch an adult version of Lord of the Rings with gratuitous titties during its appointed airing time, I want to be able to watch it whenever I want.”
And seriously. There’s nothing that can be done about it.
Sometimes I think about splitting the difference. Express my love of a show without revealing anything too meaningful about it.
However, like I said, social media is trolled by self-appointed spoiler police:
ME: I am really enjoying this season of Game of Thrones. Epic in scope, it fills me with conflicted feelings and I tip my hat to the writers for their quality work.
RESPONSES:
TROLL #1 – Ah, F%&K you, BQB! I was hoping that the scope would be narrow! Now you’ve flushed the whole thing down the shitter for me by spilling the beans that the scope is epic. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
TROLL #2 – BQB you assfaced jerk clown! I assumed the show would only make me feel one or two feelings tops but now that you have told me that the show makes people feel many different feelings I will be looking for those feelings and hence, will feel none of them. I hope you get run over by a bus, you fat ugly sack of dung beetle turds.
TROLL #3 – Oh, thanks a lot Mr. Big Mouth! Sure, just tell everyone that the writing was high quality. Ruin it for the rest of us who have ten other awesome things to do before we watch the latest installment of a damn nerd show. Maybe some of us were hoping that the writing quality would be poor. Now I won’t be pleasantly surprised to find the quality of writing is high. You sir, are the love child of Stalin and a rabid honey badger. Please contract syphilis from a toilet seat.
Ouch. But no joke, people are really serious about putting the kibosh on spoilers and they will attack you with the vengeance of a mama bear who thinks you stole her cub if you even so much as think about breathing a word about the slightest, teensiest weensiest detail about a TV show.
ME: I like the font the credits at the end of Better Call Saul were printed in.
TROLL #4 – Stick your head in a toilet and flush it, jackass! I have been waiting for months to find out what level of quality the credits at the end of that show were printed in and now you sir, have ruined my life! I now have to sell all my worldly possessions and join a monastery just so I can learn to make peace with the horror show you have made my life with your vile spoiler. Good day, sir. May a colony of spiders lay eggs in your brain.
So…here’s the deal.
Everyone hates a TV show spoiler, but it can be frustrating for people who sincerely love a TV show and want to share their thoughts about it.
Since there’s no hard and fast rule about how long spoilers are supposed to last, I am, right here, right now, by the power vested in me as a guy who ponied up a few bucks to create my own blog site, going to declare the following rule:
If a show ended 15 or more years ago, everyone is free to say whatever the hell they want about it and should not feel bad if anyone gets pissed off about it.
So as of this writing, if a show ended on or before April 30, 2001, feel free to flap your gums about it.
Yes, there will still be people who will direct venom your way for destroying the possibility that they might one day stream this older show while trying to pass a kidney stone, but hey, tell them to go suck an egg, because your pal BQB said you are in the right.
You too can be like me:
BQB: My favorite episode of I Love Lucy is the one where Lucy and Ethel stomp on the grapes in their bare feet.
TROLL #5 – You monster! I was going to stream I Love Lucy while waiting for my podiatrist appointment next week. Oh, the pain you’ve caused me you animal!
BQB: Suck an egg, loser. That show ended in 1957. But you know what didn’t end? That candy factory conveyer belt. Oh those chocolates just kept coming and coming and poor Lucy couldn’t wrap them fast enough. She didn’t know what to do so she started eating them and shoving them in her bra and everything.
TROLL #5 – You are the Antichrist!!!
BQB: And Lucy and Ricky had a son that they named, “Little Ricky!”
TROLL #5 – Oh God. Stop! Please stop!
BQB: Lucy always wanted to play at the club but Ricky didn’t want her to!
TROLL #5 – The horror! The horror!
Yup. Go on 3.5 readers. Share your knowledge of shows that ended over 15 years ago with reckless abandon. You have my permission.
Sometimes I toss a bunch of ’em out in rapid fire just to piss the spoiler police trolls off but good:
BQB: Corporal Klinger on MASH wasn’t really gay. He just wore that dress because he was hoping the Army would declare him crazy and send him home.
TROLL #6: Bahhh! Now I can’t stream MASH eleven years from now when I need something to watch while I’m cutting my toenails!
BQB: Though Mr. Wilson complained vociferously about Dennis the Menace’s shenanigans, the old man secretly cared for the boy very much and viewed him as the grandson he never had.
TROLL #7: Oh God! I can never un-see this wretched spoiler!
BQB: Lassie always runs to woof at Timmy’s parents until they figure out that Timmy has fallen down a well and needs to be rescued.
TROLL #8: Please imagine me flipping you off with both middle fingers because that’s what I am doing right now because I am so angry at you for spoiling Lassie for me you dirtbag.
BQB: Jan was always jealous of Marcia. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
TROLL #9: I just stuffed my fingers into my ears. I’m not listening….la la la…
BQB: Archie Bunker held himself as a horrendously offensive racist yet it was hard to not like him because in the end he always came around and did the right thing anyway, albeit in a begrudging, curmudgeonly manner…
TROLL #10: And you have ruined my life. Thanks a lot, Mr. Spoiler Pants.
So there you have it, 3.5 readers.
I have made my very first rule. If the show ended fifteen years or more from the date in question, feel free to throw caution to the wind and post anything and everything about that show on all of your social media outlets.
Tell your friends that Dick Van Dyke always trips over that damn table in the middle of the room.
Shout from the rooftops that Blanche is the sluttiest Golden Girl.
Buy a megaphone and announce proudly that Jerry and Elaine never end up together.
Because, up your butts with coconuts, spoiler trolls.
BQB has spoken and he has officially declared that it is our God given right as Americans to talk about shows that ended by the end of the first year of George W. Bush’s First Term.
- Columbo wasn’t as dumb as he allowed criminals to think he was.
- In West Philadelphia, the Fresh Prince was born and raised! On the playground he spent most of his days!
- Murphy Brown took Dan Quayle on over her out of wedlock pregnancy!
- Al Bundy started his own chapter of No Ma’am – the National Order of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood.
- Ellen came out as gay on Ellen.
- Sam Malone chooses the bar over Diane on Cheers.
- Dennis Franz shows his ass on NYPD Blue.
Do you have a spoiler that’s fifteen years or older that you want to get off your chest?
Share it in the comments.
But seriously, make sure it happened before this date in 2001.
Because if you talk about a show that was still on the air anytime after that date, then you are worse than Hitler and should be flogged publicly with a wet noodle and pelted with rotten tomatoes.
It’s not over until the fat lady sings but more often than not, TV writers have a tendency to make the fat lady shrug her shoulders, go, “Meh” and walk unceremoniously off stage.
Bookshelf Battle 