That’s only for certain types of show - mostly drama, but not even all of them. But for most sitcoms, you won’t be lost if you start watching in season 2 or missed a few episodes. There might be some jokes you don’t get - but that happened in the 70s as well. I remember there was a running joke about Mary Richard’s inability to throw a successful party - but you might not get some of the jokes if the first episode you watched was the last one with a party.
Anyway, I could easily not watch any movie or TV show or read any books beyond today’s date - there are plenty I haven’t seen/read, and if I’m not watching anything new, it won’t look dated.
I almost never go to movies - last week we went for the first time in several years. As for TV, there’s so much to stream that I haven’t seen yet, I’m pretty good there, too. It will last a long time since I rarely watch more than a couple of hours a night. It’s not snobbery or anything, it’s just that I’m not much interested. Plus I’ve been known to nod off at times.
I’m not either, but what if movies start getting really good again (by whatever criteria we would consider “really good”)?
What the OP proposes would rule out almost any movie date that involved going out the the theater. It would rule out any gathering or socialization with friends or family that involved watching something made after this point. It would mean that if my SO had something they wanted to see, I would be unable to share the experience with them. If a new show or movie came along that was a really well-done instance of exactly the kind of thing I like, I’d be missing out.
While my first reaction to the OP’s proposal was “That doesn’t seem so bad,” the more I think about it, the more downsides there are.
If it was a choice between being able to watch only movies made prior to today’s date, or only new movies made after, there’s no question I’d go with the wealth of movies made in the past. New movies are often disappointing. I’d feel somewhat impoverished if not allowed to watch any new ones as I usually have one or two on my wish list waiting for them to stream or become available for purchase. Currently there’s nothing much on my wish list. I’m curious to see the new Wes Anderson film but I hear it’s not that great. I’d be fine if cut off from all new movies.
Can I finish TV shows I’m currently watching? We have the current season of Resident Alien that is about half through. And I do want to watch future seasons of Ghosts.
Otherwise I would be okay with it, I would want to avoid discussions of shows I will miss.
But everything is available on-demand, now. So you can start with episode 1. Easily. I think modern TV series (especially drama) got enormously better when they started making them assuming that viewers could watch them in order and could rewind if they missed a word. No more lengthy pauses for laugh tracks. No more tiresome repetition of what happened. (Maybe a snappy summary at the start that you can skip, but they don’t rehash the plot in the main show.) We are kind of in a golden age for scripted TV right now, imho.
You know, it might almost be a relief. Things that I have loved – things like the Star Wars universe, for instance, or the Star Trek universe or even the MCU – have expanded and expanded far beyond my interest in hunting down every last episode or every last movie, so I might just be quite pleased to know that, at least for me, all of those things have firm endpoints. You say they’re developing a three-movie series about that guy who talked to Riker for a few seconds in that one episode of The Next Generation? Aw, shucks. Guess I’m going to miss out. You guys have fun, though.
For darn sure a lot of modern media marketing seems to be pressing real hard on the “collect the whole set” (“CTWS”) instinct.
Which many people seem to have in spades. And which means the evil marketers only need to get you to decide to see one episode one time, then your own CTWS obsessive behavior will drive you to see (or buy) all the others. Ka-ching for them; sux to be you.
Works for tv series, spin-offs, merch, books, etc.; the whole shebang of modern profit-driven media.
So we’re allowed to watch anything produced before today? I’d be fine; there’s a shit ton of “prestige” TV that I never got around to. I’d watch that – that would last me a few years.
Are we allowed to watch YouTube videos? I’d still be fine – hand to Og, I’ve actually considered giving up all of my TV subscriptions and only watching YouTube videos, but Mrs. Homie is having none of it.
I’d be fine just playing video games and watching YouTube videos for the rest of my life.
I’d say I could. as it is now, I can count on the fingers of one hand movies/TV of the past 5 or 6 ( hell, let’s make it a dozen ) years that I have any desire to watch . Then there are practical considerations: There are so so so many existing films/series/miniseries of the past that I want to see such that, though I’m in good health, I should live so long to be able to complete my bucket list of viewing.
Slightly but not very annoying.
Given my age, I could rewatch the shows of my youth all streaming now and be fine for the rest of my days. I’m reading David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of film (up to the S’s, page 860) and there are enough movies in there to last me several lifetimes.
Is TV news included? Please?
I see people unclear on what the “rules” would be… it only applies to NEW MOVIES AND TV SHOWS, nothing else. Not youtube, not the news, not live performances of anything… just of new movies (theatrical and on vid or tv) and tv shows, anything that is considered a tv show… or recordings of both.
But other than that, you can peruse new content of other things to your heart’s content.
And yes, the other things that you have NOT yet seen (movies, shows) up until now you may still watch. That stuff is not disallowed nor does it disappear. You’re not left with just things you’ve already seen… no, you are left with things you’ve already seen and all the movies and shows that you have NOT seen…up until the date in the thread title.
IMO, that’s a lot of content. A lifetime of it, even if one is young-ish…
..but as others have pointed out, it doesn’t allow for watching what friends are watching or being “up to date” on what is currently hot.
Eh, I asked about YouTube because it felt like such as easy bypass of the spirit of the challenge that it could change my answer. But if new Youtube (and similar) is fine then sure, no new movies or TV would be pretty easy for me and I’d still have a way to keep up on some more contemporary things.
Of course, if this is being forced upon me by some High Power then I don’t get a choice anyway but much less reason for me to be concerned if it only includes movies and prerecorded television.
Looking at all the movies that come out in the US in 2025, I’ve only seen about 10 of them and the year is halfway over. Of the 10, only one was pretty good by my standards (the monkey)
I could easily make due with the endless tens of thousands of movies and TV shows that have already been created.
What would suck is missing out on all the AI generated content that’ll be out in the 2030s. In a decade or so it’ll be affordable to create AI generated movies and TV shows that are personally designed for the personality of the viewer. So the quality of movies and TV shows will get dramatically better on an individualized level in a decade or so.
But if you’ve never had something, you’d never miss it. So I would be fine. I could easily get through the next 30-40 years of my life with the endless tens of thousands of movies and shows out there.
Yeah, this is definitely a loophole in the premise. Lots of Youtube reactors will show themselves reacting to movies and TV. For copyright/fair-use reasons, the movie or show must appear only in brief chopped-up excerpts, but there’s enough there that you could still get the basic gist of the material, so you could stay roughly current with cultural developments.
