A good old fashioned television future
"Mom, what was 'prime time'?"
Today’s post was brought to you by Seattle-based witch Kathie Fries Holsenbeck:
Streaming. It’s what the kids are doing—well, when they aren’t VSCO-girling Heathers-inspired TikTok videos. That’s a horror story for another day.
I know, your kid is gifted and never watches TV. But, for the rest of us streaming is a daily minefield of utter shit with young children. At least in my experience as the mother of three children under the age of 10 who can’t watch the same fucking show together, ever.
So what are parents supposed to do? Especially parents who grew up watching whenever we wanted? That is, until something like the McLaren Newshour, or Dan Rather popped up after She-Ra. I mean, that was my cue to start doing homework, or three-way call my friend.
My kids would binge 24-hours a day if left to their own devices. Gen X parents are the first generation of parents forced to filter a blistering amount of new content, experience the hell of binge monitoring, and deal with voice control and toddlers. We are in the middle of an entertainment anomaly that may not even exist in just a few years.
At least we might be the only generation to deal with this stress. Dan Fogelman, This is Us' showrunner, agrees: "I do think this quantity grab that’s happening right now, after a bunch of new things launch I do think there’ll be a reckoning where people need to get back to a model that used to exist where—we talk about it all the time."
And this from Vox, “The streaming revolution, which promised to break down lots of barriers in the TV industry, is beginning to morph into something else. And what it’s morphing into looks a lot more like ... traditional television.”
Steven Spielberg is even launching something you can only watch at night. TV lineups might even come back!
Until then, I’m stuck streaming with my ancient (5+ year old) devices, lost remotes, and remote control apps on phones that are always dead when teething two-year olds need Bubble Guppies. Plus, there are those parents that don’t filter anything — your kid is talking to their kid right now about Pennywise during 1st grade recess.
We can do it, guys. We can keep our kids’ brains from turning into applesauce. And keep them unsullied of curse words, sexual innuendo of the Fuller House-kind, cheap-ass animation (have you seen Norm of the North?); and let’s not forget year-round viewing of Christmas movies. All the time. If you need it, there is even a how-to blog for watching Rudolph all season long. All season. THC, anyone?
I was myself relieved, after asking around, to learn that ours isn’t the only house where Christmas movies are on year-round:
“We watch Home Alone all year round. I just gave up.”
“We watch the The Grinch all year round.”
“We watched The Grinch at the beach this past summer, on repeat!”
“Home Alone, The Nightmare Before Christmas, on all year. Polar Express was in the rotation all year but fallen off. Oh yeah, and the Kurt Russell Santa Clause movie.”
And me? Fuck The Polar Express. I’m on year six of this goddamn Christmas movie. I’m not hearing the tinkling of Santa’s bells anymore. Happy Holidays!
End credits
I hope you enjoyed this subscribers-only issue of Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers. Please pass it along, if you know someone who'd like this sort of thing a few times a week. If you’re interested in writing a guest post like this one, have any general questions or have a suggested topic you can reply right to this newsletter. You can also follow us on Instagram and talk to us on Twitter here. Here is a recent Tweet we got that’s thematic for today’s post and also eerily replicated the five minutes it took for my kid to go from watching Peppa Pig to something that looked more like “Porpa Pog” and I’m pretty sure installed spyware on my phone:
One witchy thing
One other witchy thing (because it’s Christmas)
To the other Xmas card elves - Make a spreadsheet of addresses, buy Avery labels, and you can use their super easy mail merge function on Avery.com to design and print the labels. Takes me so much less time than handwriting addresses. This year I had my three year old stick them on, so that was another win. Good luck, elves!