Web Series

Oi! Stop Fussing Over ‘The Boys’ Staggered Release. It’s Actually Nice for Once

Don’t burn every artistic venture with camphor speed. Let the artists play their cards

When ‘The Boys’ creators announced (very casually) that for season 2 they are looking at a first-batch and then weekly releases, no one paid much attention. Everyone was like ‘meh, whatever’. No one actually thought that these “weekly” releases could be a thing in OTT, especially for originals trying to put in their toe in the humungous OTT world.

Well, as it was, the show released, fans got surprised, and the gobble masters, the “binge-watchers”, were of course disgruntled. They had their wafers and beers ready for marathon, and here was Amazon, quietly standing at the corner with a bunch of bonus 5-min short films after the first three batch-release episodes were over.

“Amazon seriously? You gonna risk my attention span against Netflix?”

Said some. People close to me too.

The outrage got so ugly, that the creators of the show had to come out and say it was “theirs (and only theirs)” plan to release it this way, it was an “artistic decision” and that they wanted to let the story “marinate” in audience’s minds longer, before the next part in the story.

Amazon simply agreed to the creator’s request for once.

And they were now paying the price.

Whatta Shitty 2020

Staggered release? For me, personally, I couldn’t care any less.

If you have been watching TV series for long enough, and have just not binge-watched every famous series in your college bunks, you are already comfortable with scheduled releases. Even for the bunker ones, how were you guys managing your Game of Thrones marathons? Don’t tell me you waited for the whole season to end so that you can have a final binge-watch, did you? (Oh boy, I can only imagine.)

Anyhoo, a disclaimer.

I am not a “The Boys” fan.

I like the concept. I absolutely loved the idea when the first trailer came for season 1. But I also watched it disappoint ‘me’ as the season got over, got pumped up again (not as the first time though), and am right now contemplating how the new season is churning out so far (update: not very great).

Look, you can see loopholes all over the place if you are not cinema blind. I may very well reserve my review of the series when it gets over, but I cannot ignore the blatant clumsiness of screenplay, dialogues, and a not-so-adhesive script. To its credit though, it has some really nice cinematography and color grading but yeah, back to the point.

Therefore I get it when you don’t pay shit to all this and just want to know what happens to Homelander and Stormfront, will Butcher get Becca back, what is Homelander’s son capable of and so on. You just want to know the “end” right? Just the end.

It’s always the end.

The Gimme-All Sugar Rush

Netflix did a pretty good job of getting people hooked to dopamine rushes by their brilliant stay-put strategy.

“Are you telling me that I can watch the next episode, RIGHT NOW, without any waiting, any ads, direct story continuation from here? I can know what happens after this brilliant cliffhanger I just saw?”

“Yes, sir. In fact, you don’t even need to press anything. Stay put while I autoplay it for you.”

Since then, our voracious viewer never got up the couch.

Of course, OTT was always conceived as — everything available at once — but they changed the game when they did it for new launches as well. They did not hold back.

Now season after seasons passes, without any real thought to the story. The sugar rush of the knowing-it-all as-soon-as-possible has captured every aspect of today’s world — including art.

Take Instagram

Brilliant masterpieces created by hours of effort from some artists.

On average, do we even spend 15 secs per post if not for a caption?

I am personally accustomed to wheezing past the posts, like a maniac scrolling through yellow pages of a local phone directory, waiting for that next ‘reel’ to make me laugh.

And web series produces are not dumb. Neither are real connoisseurs of art.

Quality Tanks Down

Like all arts, TV/ web originals is a beautiful, effort-intensive composition. For all the good ones, it can take years to just finalize the script before it goes into production. It can take a complete packed year to just make 6 episodes of a series, with teams and shoot locations spanning the globe.

How do you think the artist feels when someone just binges a fresh release through one night and pops out the season finale suspense on Reddit the day after?

They might still be less bothered by this fact, than by that all discussions across every forum are just talking about the final episode suspense and judging the whole show based on it (GoT you are not spared here, mind you). Nobody wants to talk about what happens in the middle episodes, how the story built up, how the character shaped up, everybody wants to just talk about “Damn, this character got butchered” (see what I did there?)

It’s sad. For someone who creates art. And for someone who appreciates it.

This use-and-throw strategy is the breeding ground for so many quick release runoffs of crappy stories, bogging down our internet bandwidths.

Quality takes a back seat when quantity is what keeps the viewer glued to their Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu subscriptions.

The Boys tried to challenge this status quo, and I stand in full solidarity with the creators. I am ready to wait until the next Friday comes when I can see how’s Butcher fucking up this time.

Let Art Marinate

See, I enjoy binging. I am a millennial. I love it when I could go back the next day to my office talking about how the new season of House of Cards still bangs spot on.

What I don’t love, is when they don’t talk back about “Oh, in this episode, this happened, which made me go woooo” or “Wow, the screenplay, characters placement in Ep. xx was just phenomenal” or simply, “Do you remember that woman, who died in Ep. 3? Gosh, her acting was A W E S O M E”

These never make it to the general talk. These can scarcely happen in a world where it’s sheer dumb to talk about a character who died in freakin’ Ep 3 out of a 10 episode show.

Who wants to remember her with the world upside down in the rest 7 episodes?

Would you?