Please Stand By
I didn’t watch much television growing up, but in the last year of being confined, that has changed.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy television normally, I do. It’s that my foray into television only truly began in the age of streaming, when terms like binge-worthy entered our local lexicon, when television shows were dropped — neatly tied up in the hefty bundle of a fifteen-hour season — into the middle of our weeks, winking at us as we struggled to keep our attentions focused on whatever task was at hand. Perhaps some people can dole out their television consumption in controlled portions, one episode today, one episode tomorrow. Not me. My personality is an obsessive one; when I fixate on something, trying to get it out of my mind is like wrestling a ball from a beagle. I have lost days, weeks to a surprise season drop; I have been ambushed by sincere acting and compelling story; I have surrendered bushels of my time to the worlds of others. Because of this, it is part pragmatism, and part fear, that has led me to keep away from television for much of my adult life: I want to live in my reality, I don’t trust myself to navigate safely out of rabbit holes.
Of course, the fracturing of our collective attention spans in the last year has disrupted long-established routines and practices, and one of the more frivolous fallouts was my relationship with media consumption. Living in a state of perpetual distraction and low-level panic, unable to focus on books, podcasts, let alone writing, my mind snapped towards the junk food of media— Instagram, Twitter, Google News headlines. I spent my days scrolling and tapping mindlessly, superficially interfacing with the digital world in pursuit of external stimuli. Later, I moved to the television: I started watching cartoons, dramas, comedies, thrillers. I appreciated the low-commitment opportunity to participate in an exercise of the imagination. I smiled, I laughed, I cried. Over and over again, I clicked, next episode.
Television, of course, can be very good. At its best, it is a work of art; at its worst, a mindless form of company, the friend that prattles on about nothing at all and doesn’t mind you sitting there, mumbling noises of assent once in a while. Before the advent of streaming, families might gather once a week to watch each new episode of their favorite soaps; the working woman might rush home to make the nightly air time for a drama she’s invested in; students might prattle on about ever-changing conspiracy theories sparked by an airing series’s nightly release format. Thrilled by the narrative plunge of a cliffhanger, they might bemoan the twenty-three hours to be endured between each new development, urge the hands of time forward, repeat to each other, I can’t wait, I can’t wait.
And with the advent of streaming, we don’t have to. Whole worlds can be started and dissolved in a day, the cycle of closure can be enacted several times a week, our systems of belief transported through time and space and genre from one day to the next. Control over our imagination’s agendas has been largely handed over to us, technology’s response to the market’s demands. In response to this autonomy, shaped like a leash, I am afraid. I know myself, the depths of my obsessiveness, and when I am able to, I turn away.
In the pandemic, however, there was nothing to turn to. So I returned again and again to the television, ashamed but also entertained. I caught up quickly to what everyone else was watching. I finally got into Modern Family, Brooklyn 99; I completed The Good Place; I traveled back in time with Kingdom; leapt forward with Psycho-Pass; to other realities with Alice in Borderland, Sweet Home; immersed myself in animations like Attack on Titan, The Promised Neverland, Demon Slayer, and Scissor Seven; flirted with magic and the supernatural in The Uncanny Counter, Umbrella Academy; and for the first time in my life, indulged in the petty torching of Hell’s Kitchen. I threw the doors of my mind wide open, I kept away from anything that wasn’t already complete. I binged.
In retrospect, a slip-up was inevitable. A month ago, a friend sent me a link to the first episode of Disney+’s new series, WandaVision. The premise of the television show excited me: a grieving superhero, fixated on her losses, and thus, trapped in a false, sitcomized reality where time was elastic? I was game. My history with the Marvel Cinematic Universe was that of a casual viewer, limited purely to theatrical releases, and I wasn’t up to date enough to realise that the series wasn’t finished. When episode two ended, I waited for the next episode to come on.
Instead, the screen flickered: Please Stand By. The credits rolled for seven whole minutes.
What?
I was blindsided. It’s a weekly release, my friend explained, and I blinked again. What?
It’s true, if I had known, I’d have waited for everything to be out before starting the series. But there was no backing out now: the show was wonderful, I was already hooked. For the past five weeks, my time has been infused with the impatience of a teenager, as I discuss conspiracy theories and possible Easter eggs with my friends. Every Friday, I wait eagerly to see if answers to the questions I’ve been nesting all week have accurately hatched. Beyond the playful frustration inherent to waiting, I have found myself the better for it, my mind slowly forced to withstand the rubber band tension of anticipation, the delicious snap of delayed gratification. I have no doubt that if I could, I’d watch all remaining episodes at a go, immediately, now, stat. But I cannot, the choice is taken away from me. If you asked, I would say yes. Give it to me, all of it, now. But instead, I say, I can’t wait, I can’t wait. How wonderful it is to have something to look forward to, no matter how frivolous, no matter how small.
N.B.: This piece was written before the WandaVision finale premiered on March 5th. Jemimah is now eagerly anticipating the follow-up launch of Falcon and the Winter Soldier; she waits, she is waiting.
