core response 02_jacqueline maldonado

Raise your hand if you have a hierarchy of shows to watch, either based on digestibility or presumed quality.

Reflecting on this, I believe Kackman was onto something in the opening discussion of “quality” shows presented as such through their distribution methods. In the basic sense, I identify streamers by the content I watch there; Hulu is the most recent episode of The Bachelor, Netflix is often a word-of-mouth series I tell myself I don’t want to watch but still incessantly keep up to date with like You or Stranger Things, and Starz and Showtime have taken over HBO’s place as a home to the gritty emotionally charged niche drama with Gaslit and Yellowjackets. 

\While we’ve come to a point of massive production that this kind of identification isn’t entirely necessary nor accurate, there remains a presumed superiority of platforms from creators and consumers alike. Kackman first described HBO as having “branded itself as the preeminent site of quality television” which, in the classic ‘not television, it’s HBO’ tagline, often caused viewers to undermine series from other networks. The list of series that contradict this amongst those Kackman already included are too long (also, the only coming to mind at the moment are Alias and Veronica Mars. My bad), but it offers further evaluation on how the quality of a series is determined before content can be revealed.

While Kackman primarily discusses the opposite of this within the narratives of the Lost series finale (yes I am still thinking about that), this context to the essay at large insinuates the identifying function of a distributor still prevalent today. That’s not necessarily going away—A24 is known to have a vibe in their films the same way a director will also have a signature style of some kind—but looking to the overall quality of an object from the space you can find it in feels more complicated of an issue outside of the Network boom than during. When Lost regularly aired on ABC, promos were sandwiched between content like Pushing Daisies and Wife Swap. On Netflix, the dating show Perfect Match comes up as a recommendation beneath MH370: The Plane That Disappeared.

There's a trend here, and I know we all have concerns about the direction it is going in.