This episode, we talk about spoilers. Don’t worry – we don’t spoil anything for you. At least not much of anything. Instead, we talk about the concept of spoilers and what the protocol should be around them. When is it OK to stop worrying about spoiling something for someone? And what constitutes a spoiler anyway? Seriously – we do talk spoilers on a few recent movies and TV shows (including Game of Thrones and Star Wars) so if you don’t want us to spoil anything for you, we’ll catch you next week!
We talk about John Kovalic’s spoiler blame game post so here’s a link!
One of my friends went out an got himself a Ukrainian mail order bride. She didn’t know very much about American movies, and I went with them to see a special screening of “Psycho”. Which shocked her so much, she was next to speechless about it.
A few months later, I went with them to a screening of “Planet of the Apes” at the Heights Theater, and she was not fooled for a minute about the surprise ending. “The planet looks like earth, has vegetation that is earth-like, there are lots of human beings around, and the apes speak and write English. I knew all that a half-hour into the movie.”
Moral of the story: even if it’s an older film, if the viewer sees it with fresh eyes, it’s not cool to wreck the movie.
And what about Netflix or Amazon Prime shows, were they drop and entire season at once. I didn’t watch all the episodes of “Daredevil” or “Jessica Jones” in one marathon 13-hour session. But I saw spoilers the day after they premiered (don’t those people have jobs?), so the moratorium on spoilers should be at least a month or so.
In his answer to question 4, Nathan brought up a lot of points that I had planned to bring up when I’m on the podcast (Vermin Kickstarter reward!) but I think I’m a bit more optimistic for reasons I’ll get into at that time. I believe the war-justifying atheist he was talking about was Hitchens, who supported the Iraq war, and possibly Sam Harris, who definitely supports racial profiling.
As for spoilers, my avoidance is pretty much on the same level as Molly’s. I don’t watch the “next time” teasers on TV shows and I don’t seek out movie trailers, although I’ll watch them if I’m in the theater. My husband goes even further; he’ll put in his earbuds and stare at his iPhone until I nudge him to indicate that the movie is about to start.