On Sunday’s episode of the blockbuster HBO drama Game of Thrones a rather big thing happened. This is not always the case with the show – or, frankly, with a lot of serialised shows currently on the air.
Sometimes, it seems, they plod along at a glacial pace with lots of empty scenes and characters staring expressionlessly into space, as if to say: “We don’t really have anything to accomplish in this episode, but we need to stall a bit, so here’s a scene with one of the stars looking pensive.”
Game of Thrones is no different. Mostly, it seems to me, the show is comprised of vast expanses of tedium punctuated by moments of shocking violence. People meander around muddy fields and stone fortresses muttering oddly-phrased curses, and then suddenly, Pow! Someone’s head gets chopped off.
To be honest, I stopped watching the show a few years back, so I didn’t actually see the rather big thing that happened on the most recent episode of Game of Thrones.
I was made aware of it by the ripples and tremors that radiated through my various social media hotspots – there were cryptic mentions on Twitter and Facebook, and even some of my Instagram pals got into the act – but when I wanted to know what, exactly, happened on the previous night’s instalment of Game of Thrones, I did the obvious.
I Googled the words, “What exactly happened on the previous night’s instalment of Game of Thrones?”
It turns out that there are dozens and dozens of sites across the internet – some amateur and low-key, others from well-known places like The New York Times – that produce painstakingly accurate synopses of Game of Thrones. And not just that show, but pretty much every other television offering that people get obsessed by, binge-watch, lose track of, and have stacked like firewood on their digital video recorders.
Some of these summaries – they are, I discovered, called “recaps” – are snide and clever, written from a fan’s perspective, with a lot of inside jokes.
These, I decided, were more useful to someone who had actually seen the episode being recapped. (Though why anyone would bother to read a summary of a television show they had actually seen is a baffling question.)
The really useful recaps appeared in more traditional places, like The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly websites.
They were compactly written but authoritative, with enough colour and background information so that someone like me, who has only a dim memory of the show and its characters, could easily get the gist. In other words, they were like well-written news articles in a respectable newspaper: detailed, readable and comprehensive.
That’s not off the mark, in a way. I suppose, in some odd sense, these shows are “newsworthy”. People plan their lives around them – like they do with the weather or war. So why shouldn’t some news outfits cover them like parliamentary debates or summit meetings?
I quickly found a fairly straightforward recap and digested it in less than three minutes while waiting for my Uber to arrive.
While I was surfing through the recaps, though, I caught up on a few other shows I haven’t seen in a while.
By the time my Uber pulled up to collect me, I had packed about a year’s worth of binge-worthy television in a few concise recaps. Without, it should be emphasised, having to watch the shows at all. I enjoyed it so much I made a mental note to do it again: not to see the shows; just to read the recaps.
That is, as management consultants might say, a “business model problem”. The television business, with all of its high-tech production values and fibre-optic distribution systems, is supposed to be a forward-leaning, cutting-edge industry.
Television shows are produced all over the globe, and they appear on whichever screen you prefer: the big one in the living room, the smaller one on the tablet, or the tiny one in your pocket – all with a seamless and technologically advanced touch of the screen.
What is required to power all of this activity – to fund the shows and their casts and (my particular rice bowl) the writers – is that the audience gets hooked on the characters and their stories, that people become addicted to the narrative flow and the twists and turns.
In show business, we call that “investment”, as in: if the audience doesn’t feel a major investment in a show and its world, it’ll never be a hit.
Now, though, you don’t have to watch the show to keep your investment up. You can just catch up the next day, with your favourite recap. The television business has too many shows that people like, it seems. There are too many things to be invested in, especially when the recaps are fast enough to read while waiting for your Uber.
Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl