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Adhithya K R's avatar

Came to this post with the post-cliffhanger clarity of Severance S2's last episode... Wish you had written this in Jan and saved me 20 hours of my life. I thought Season 1 was terrific and expected Season 2 to answer all the questions they had asked. But like an engineering student in a midterm test, they seem to be pushing all the important questions to the end hoping for a miracle.

Loved the explanation for WHY this is happening – I've been noticing a lot of Netflix shows, even Sitcoms turning to heavy exposition, like "I literally spent all of my time working on this Robotus AI and now you're going to give credit to the guy on the team who did nothing?" As a guy who doesn't multitask when watching this stuff or watch things 'on the background', I was baffled, like "Why are you explaining to me what's going on? I'm literally seeing it!" But maybe I'm not the target audience.

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Trungphan2's avatar

Thanks for the read, Adhithya! Agreed on the Netflix sitcoms. My wife watches them a lot and I'll catch a lot of dialouge in the background. Every now and then, it's such a specific plot point and i'm like "huh?" weird. But totally makes sense based on the supposed script notes.

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Adhithya K R's avatar

Haha, yeah it's weird. Btw, are your DMs open? Messaged you yesterday about something I'm working on

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Swag Valance's avatar

You watch TV for the memes? for "banger" quotes?

We are not the same.

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Trungphan2's avatar

Thanks for the read Swag. I'd say the memes and banger quotes are like 4% of the article.

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Boona's avatar

Great read, Trung. Sums up why i only pay for apple and hbo

my observation in the past decade is that every creative media outlet has gone through this (music, film, now tv), and i think your bit on youtube “if used properly” applies to every media outlet we have

taste is the new skill, and is going to continually become more important in this age of abundance and democratization of everything

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Trungphan2's avatar

Thanks for the read, Boona! Agreed with "used properly". Dosage makes the poison! Be reasonable and curate and can find good stufff almost any platform.

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Dan Draper's avatar

Great Article! We all became addicted to Streaming Content without realising over the years.

Check out ZeroZeroZero: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8332438/

Its an 8 Episode MiniSeries in the style of Sicario/Narcos/Gomorrha

You will love it!

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Trungphan2's avatar

Thanks for the read and reccod Dan! That is just my length lol

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Richard B's avatar

Awesome one Trung, fully agreed on this. Now I have the perfect comeback for all my coworkers demanding I catch up on Severance!

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Trungphan2's avatar

Hahaha, Thanks Richard and please do share when they ask.

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Ted Herman's avatar

I've observed that students of film, or wine, or art, or programming languages morph into an expert mentality. Deep knowledge can lead to a sense of "having seen it all" with common examples. This creates a drive for novelty and the thrill of discovering something truly unique. Advanced jazz aficionados eventually get into Cecil Taylor, for instance, which is just unpleasant noise to casual fans. Trung, dude, you have overindulged in entertainment, become such an expert and master of consumption that you may disdain us who are mere amateurs.

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Trungphan2's avatar

Thanks for the read Ted! I think you may have misinterpreted main point of piece. It's not an auter/"student of the arts" argument (which I couldn't even make). It's literally "streaming TV is wasting our time and here are technological/economic/business model reasons" why this is the case.

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Ted Herman's avatar

Bet, but not everyone is all logical and Vulcan about wasting time - ty

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Karthik Rajeshwaran's avatar

Thanks much

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Kevin Doan's avatar

Hi Trung, kindly check your inbox. Thanks

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