I’ll be honest… ‘First Kill’ has been the only up-to-date streaming TV show I’ve watched since Sense8 and I was absolutely devastated when they cancelled that to the point where I gave up on streaming services altogether and went back to my box sets of my favourites and classics: Xena, Buffy and Charmed.
The reason why I do not like the more recent TV shows of today is because many are not “TV” and when they are TV - they’re not given the time or budget from the network to bloom and flourish the way they probably could if cancel culture wasn’t so prevalent and there wasn’t all this pressure and anxiety surrounding supporting it so that it doesn’t get cancelled. When I’m engaged and all of this looms about like a dark cloud about to fucking pour down… I retreat into my comfortable familiar space of DVD box sets where I don’t have to worry about any of this.
And as for the excuse of “you’ll never be able to see that old and dated show for the first time ever again” to argue for checking out the more recent stuff… I just don’t agree with that because my beloved favourite TV shows grow with me so I never see them entirely the same as the last time I watched them. In a way, they change. But it’s not an uncomfortable change because the core of why and how much I love them and the nostalgia in returning to watching them is still there. There’s just more to it than before that adds on and makes me love it even more in that moment than I already did. You get none of this with the “new stuff”.
As I keep saying over and over again: well-written good quality TV shows are timeless. Yes, they’re fully concluded but they don’t necessarily “end” because you only see what’s already within your own consciousness. The TV show you watched and adored when you were a child will be different to the TV show you watch and adore now that you’re an adult. And yet it is technically still the exact same TV show.
I took a chance with ‘First Kill’ and I am genuinely glad I did,.. but I won’t lie when I say that I am scared cancel culture will swallow it whole and my engagement with it will be completely pointless. It’s not looking good and I know that the way to ensure that it will have more of a chance to be renewed is to engage with the creator/actor interviews and behind-the-scenes and binge and stan culture around it…
But honestly - I just don’t want to because I just don’t care. You can say I’m not helping myself by not supporting it in this way - but it’s just not who I am. Who I am is a creative theorist. I come up with and write meta. I address and talk about the TV show itself. What’s going on in it, where I think they can take it…. all the character representation/development. That’s my interest in art/entertainment.
They have just cancelled an actual WLW “TV” show I was watching and was fairly interested in despite it being a period piece and therefore not my genre at all. ‘Gentleman Jack’. ‘First Kill’ is my only hope now. And I’m tired of pretending to care about binging it. I don’t “binge”. I don’t “stan”. I don’t “thirst”. I’m just a fan who enjoys the show because, to me, it is quality art/entertainment and I do want it to continue. But I’m not going to spend all my time and energy “helping it”. I’m a grown ass adult with a full time job and I can only interact with this TV show when I have spare time
