Issue 7 - cancellations, jabs, deliveries
A possibly weekly email about what's been going on in my brain
1 - 7 January 2023
Back to work and The Great Delegation tm has begun - where any project work assigned to me I push onto my team members so they can get their head around my projects while I'm around to supervise. That's the official line anyway.
No photos taken this week due to January grimness, so a throwback to my first trip to Japan in 2006:
Netflix
It's a running joke that Netflix cancels their own shows before a third season, with little regard for popularity, potential, or viewer hours. For the longest time no shows that I've been particularly attached to have been on the chopping block - Altered Carbon's second season had nowhere near the sharp edge the first did despite it still being decent cyberpunk, Sense8 was always a tough sell and the muddled end of season one didn't encourage me to continue with the second, Daredevil and its Defenders ilk had definitely run their course and the rise of Disney+ put an obvious expiration on them, the live action Cowboy Bebop was genuinely awful and I was surprised the first season was even released. The list goes on.
But the double hit of cancelling 1899 after one season and Warrior Nun after two rankled me and made me think about the brittle position that Netflix has built for itself.
In the early days when Netflix's own programming was just coming into its own - House of Cards and Orange is the New Black - the "episode dump" format worked and was a fresh take on serialized storytelling. Without advertising or the strictures of existing TV networks, why not just release all the episodes at once? With only a few tent-pole shows this approach worked thanks to their novelty and quality, and because the majority of Netflix's other programming was scavenged from other sources.
As it gathered more subscribers and began to produce more of its own content though the format began to cause friction. Shows were no longer just competing for audience attention but also against one another, the whip-crack of the UI shuttling you into another episode, another series, just keep watching, please keep watching. The launch of a series all at once meant that if you wanted to be part of the conversation - with colleagues, friends etc. - you had better watch the whole thing or you're going to be left out. By its nature then, shows either burn bright and brief, or not at all. Without the weekly draw of each new episode, giving normal human beings time to watch and absorb and talk and theorise, there is a very short window for fandoms to flourish.
Yet now with the Damocles' Sword of cancellation hanging over every new production, you have to ask whether you really want to invest into something that could never be allowed to deliver. Maybe you should wait a few months, check the reactions, see if another season is greenlit. Only now you're contributing to the "low" viewer numbers that the overseers at Netflix us as justification to drop the sword. Or perhaps you do take a punt and start watching only to realise the idea of discrete episodes now means nothing when a single instalment can reach movie-length runtimes, making the whole idea of "episodes" pointless and drawing you into the whirlpool of the sunk cost fallacy.
It's a vicious circle and one that other streaming services - Prime and Disney+ specifically - seem to have avoided. You only have to look at the buzz around Andor - it didn't hurt that the series itself was phenomenal but would it have had the groundswell of positivity if unceremoniously plopped onto the platform all at once?
To say nothing of the showrunners themselves who must be beleaguered at the situation, perhaps questioning whether its worth putting so much of themselves into a show. It's a shame because there are good shows on there - I finished Alice in Borderland which surprised me with a great ending that I didn't think it could pull off - but increasingly it's becoming a graveyard of fickle investment and curtailed promise. Suffice to say I felt no regret in cancelling my subscription this past week, and my parents on the same account (that's right Netflix, I password share) barely ever open the app anymore.
Holiday update
I've boarded the vaccination train this week with the first dose of Hep B, followed by a second dose and Tetanus next week. Apparently there is a supply chain issue with the Japanese Encephalitis shot though, an that's exactly the kind of Encephalitis I'd like to be vaccinated against. The higher-reasoning, logical part of my brain knows I'm at extremely low risk, the worry-gremlin part of my brain though is storing this info for later when I get any kind of ailment. I mean, you're not vaccinated against it John, so it could be...
I also put together a toiletry order and it turns out that three months of tinctures and potions and perfumes is kind of expensive all at once. That combined with clothes and a laptop (opinion pending) has meant that this week has been all about the deliveries.
Now if the yen could rise just a little bit from its precipitous drop over new year that would be lovely.
YouTube watches
- The Mean Kitty song - I have never heard this before this week despite the original apparently being a "classic"
- The Perfect Synthetic Diamond - a bit flat in the delivery but covers the rise of the diamond syndicates (especially DeBeers) and the current tech for creating synthetic diamonds
- Why 5 Of The World's Salts And Spices Are So Expensive - an anthology of other "So Expensive" episodes, I love the back-handed take down of Bamboo Salt here
- Heavy Snow in Ginzan Onsen - not on my list of places to visit due to timings and location but it is very picturesque (and, unfortunately, crowded)
- A clutch of great Japanese music videos from the past year: Hitsujibungaku & LÜCY - OH HEY, Sorane - GIMME HPN, Pasocom Music Club - Sign ft. Takashi Fujii, kojikoji - Togei, Zombie Chang - Switch
Random links
- Tokyo Weekender's Top Music Videos of 2022 - where I cribbed the videos above from
- Adobe automatically opting your photos into being used in AI datasets - because of course they are
This was hand-crafted by John.