TV Tuesday: Getting Into It

[yourlibrarian]

When you are asked for show recommendations, do you find that you tend to recommend watching chronologically or do you pick the best episodes to tempt them? Does it make a difference which show or genre it is?

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

I know that I have run into this issue when watching semi-serialized shows. Some absolutely have to be watched from the beginning, though I know I have warned people that the first few episodes may be slow until you start getting to know the characters and grasp where the plot is going.

But Buffy, for example, could have a lot of S1 skipped since the show really takes off in S2. I have a friend to whom I'd recommended watching it multiple times and she was always resistant to trying it. Finally she did and I told her that if she wanted to she could watch the first episode and then skip to the final two episodes of S2 if she wanted to watch it in order. However given I started the show in S4 (I didn't have access before then) and then had to pick much of the season in reruns later due to a major life event, so that I really only watched it in sequence in S5 and then saw seasons 1-3 while S6 was airing. So I felt certain that it was less important to know all the plotlines than to really gravitate to the characters. I think certain episodes that are standalones but standouts (like Hush) might go a long way to getting someone interested and then if they wanted to they could start from the beginning once they were hooked.

[china_shop]

Ha, my first episode of Buffy was The Zippo, which I caught on TV and was a really weird one to start with! (It's the one that focuses on Xander, with Buffy and Angel being all melodramatic in the background.) :D

[yourlibrarian]

It's amazing you kept with it! I quite like that episode but it's so atypical 😃

[china_shop]

I didn't watch any more until there was an end-of-season-3 "marathon" on our local TV channel, at which point, I saw that, got hooked, and went back to catch up. :D