I can’t watch what the rest of you are watching.
By virtue of being handed, apparently, an extra scoop of debilitating empathy in the great cafeteria of creation, I have something around zero tolerance for the kinds of conflict, violence, and other scripted suffering you all are stuffing your eyeballs with every evening. And in the lawless era of streaming, I find it exceedingly difficult to find a show that meets my short list of heart-guarding criteria, which I think is NOT THAT MUCH TO ASK:
- No gratuitous violence
- No sexual violence that is not absolutely necessary for plot or character development
- No gore
- No gritty portrayals of the realities of teaching in underfunded schools
- No zombies
Some of this I can screen for through promotional materials. The thumbnail for Santa Clarita Diet, for example, is Drew Barrymore drinking an organ smoothie. Got it. A quick glance at Twitter any Sunday evening from 2015-2019, for another example, told me everything I needed to know about whether I might want to watch Game of Thrones before bed. I did not.
Many shows, however, have nothing in their ads that indicate you’re in for gushing veins or protruding bones, and yet there you arrive nonetheless. This can happen after months, even YEARS of gore-free trust building, so that one minute you’re wondering if you could wear that same shade of chartreuse as Joan, and the next you’re watching blood spray across the crisply ironed shirts of the Sterling Cooper marketing team.
This is what I fear every time we scroll through our Netflix suggestions, the Wild Wild West of cultural desensitization. Say what you will about censorship and Standards and Practices, but they ensured that I could enjoy a nice, dark bit of science fiction each week, resting in the knowledge that any alien entrails appearing on screen would be very poorly lit. And if there was, say, the occasional incestuous quadruple amputee decapitating the local sherrif, the episode would at least come with a “viewer discretion” warning so I could prepare myself accordingly.
Perhaps you’d think I could just take recommendations, but I’ve found that is tantamount to ignoring that the menu offers both “hot” and “Thai hot.” Other people’s tolerance level for watching horrible things is just on an entirely different scale than mine. This is how it came to be that I watched the first episode of Ozark, which one of Eric’s coworkers said was “SO good, and kind of violent, but not that bad,” and then I didn’t sleep for three days.
I also tried Jack Ryan, which seemed promising at first with some unnecessary shirtless scenes of John Krasinski and a couple of requisite Tom-Clancy-level terrorist attacks, but a few episodes in and whoops, we almost forgot! Here comes the torture and the sexual violence!
So basically, I’m back to watching Parks and Rec, Silicon Valley, and The Great British Baking Show on an endless loop.
I feel your disappointment. I know you want me to be able to talk with you about major cultural touchstones. I know you are frustrated that we cannot discuss the cutting commentary of Black Mirror or the visual artistry of Hannibal or the dark comedy of Barry. I know you just want me to share in the joy and entertainment you’ve discovered in these shows you love.
I hear you, and I want you to know this: I don’t care.
I need precisely eight hours of quality sleep each night for optimal functioning, and I’m not sacrificing clarity of mind or skin for your depraved visual media preferences. You do you, and I’ll stick to coffee-mug-worthy dinosaur chases as my adrenaline ceiling, thank you very much.
There is more to be explained, perhaps in a later post, about the challenges of life as a highly empathic person. It’s a wild and often inconvenient ride. For now, though, I would like to tentatively shine the empath Bat Signal into the sky (which I would guess is shaped like an emotional and fully transparent facial expression worn at a staff meeting) and ask: what can you watch without permanent scarring, fellow sensitive persons? Is there nothing? Will it be America’s Test Kitchens from now until the end of time??
Wait, I forgot that that would be completely fine. Bone apple teeth!
Same.