When
Breaking Bad aired its Swan song a
couple weeks ago, 10.3 million people were glued to their screens around the world to
see how Walt’s story would end. What happened on social media was arguable even
more impressive. Posts on facebook discussing Breaking Bad topped out at 5.5 million interactions while 1.24
million tweets where being launched. And yet, all of these statistics pale in
comparison to the unique phenomenon happening on Netflix during the day leading
up to the final season. According to BusinessWeek:
“When Netflix released the fourth season to streaming viewers
the day before Season Five premiered, 50,000 viewers are estimated to have
binge-watched the 13-season episode season in one day.” Furthermore, the most-watched
program on their streaming service by the time season five came to a close was
the show’s 2008 pilot episode.
Undoubtedly
this was due, at least in part, to the media frenzy created by the show and the
sudden need for those feeling left out of the conversation to finally catch up
and regain a bit of cultural relevance. At the same time, the statistics appear
to reveal another, less obvious, aspect of our humanity as well: the need for us to share experiences in
order for us to fully enjoy them.
In
his book Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis once wrote,
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but
completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out
of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are;
the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have
discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to
come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected
grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for
it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one
to share it with.
The
point articulated by Lewis can be highlighted by another phenomenon brought to
us by the eerily strange sitcom tool known as the “laugh track.” As many people
know (and I sincerely apologize if I am the one to break it to those who don’t)
that predictable laugh which erupts after every joke uttered in a sitcom, with
consistent and impeccable timing, is fake. Fake, but incredible important. When
TV producers first made the decision to pre-tape their shows rather than
perform them before live audiences, ratings initially plummeted. Executives
argued that without an audience the shows became flat, the acting more shallow,
and the characters less real to viewers. In the place of a live audience,
producers found that by simply interjecting a pre-recorded laugh, viewers were
set at ease. If you doubt the power of the laugh track I encourage you to take
a look at this YouTube clip of a
“Friends” episode presented without the laugh track. Awkward scarcely describes
the experience.
As relational beings we desperately long to experience human
connections: even if the way we find them is through the common experience of
watching a season finale together or laughing along with a digitally recorded
crowd. Perhaps at a subconscious level, it is this ultimate desire for
community that had many people checking their watches several weeks ago and
skipping out on a variety of activities to ensure that they would not miss an
opportunity the following day to affirmatively answer four words that serve as
the entrance into the kind of human connection we all so desperately
crave. “Did you see it?”
