Partying with the Streamers

I recently experienced a phenomenon from days gone by. A blast from the past, if you will. A nostalgic interlude. What happened was, a friend of my husband’s stopped by our house to borrow a DVD of the American masterpiece and future entry into the Criterion Collection, Drop Dead Gorgeous. That hasn’t happened in generations! It was very rustic and was the closest I’ll ever voluntarily get to camping. I was in no way, shape or form put out by this. I’ll gladly take any opportunity to share the underappreciated genius of Drop Dead Gorgeous with another citizen, even if it causes an unexpected visit.

But this begs the question, why isn’t Drop Dead Gorgeous on a streaming service? What the hell, streaming services? You’ve got room for The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, but not a nearly perfect piece of cinema (which, admittedly, has some jokes that haven’t aged well, but your mother and mayonnaise-based salads are proof that lots of things don’t age well)? Save me your legalese about clearances and copyrights. What about my rights as a consumer? What about my right to experience joy? What about my right to see Allison Janney nail a central Minnesota accent with the kind of subtlety normally reserved for ice cold diarrhea?

Streaming services have gotten away with too much for too long!

There isn’t much that I can do to shake any sense into streaming services. I mean, Paramount + has been around for years and it still doesn’t have its shit together. It’s like a coworker who’s trying to get out of doing work by saying, “I’m still new,” three years into the job. You know what, Pam? You’re about as new as the turkey jerky stash you keep at your desk that you don’t think anyone knows about. We know! And we are collectively APPALLED. I think what I’m saying is, the Paramount + equivalent of turkey jerky is the Frasier reboot.

I can completely understand the concept of a streamer trying to entice you to sign up for a subscription based on one good show. When HBO Max launched, that show was the Friends reunion. A lot of people signed up for HBO Max just because they wanted to see that show and I’ll bet most of them woke up the next morning feeling the same way as they would have if they were 12 and it was the day after they went to a birthday party only because the kid had a trampoline, a bunch of fireworks and disengaged parents. Which is to say, they had no regrets because cancelling a streaming subscription is one of the few things that can still make you feel alive (and there isn’t a single example in all of history of a 12-year-old regretting anything).

Speaking of parties, let’s imagine what it would be like to be at a party with all the streaming services. Are they polite guests? Are they good at small talk? Is that bitch for real? I’d like to RSVP as “buffering.”

• Prime Video – If Prime Video gets invited to a party, it’s not for the right reasons. That makes it sounds like Prime Video is an opportunistic skank on The Bachelor, but it’s the truth. Most everyone who has Prime Video has it because they have Amazon Prime and are addicted to having delivery date promises broken with no consequences, like when rich people don’t pay their taxes or whatever truck drivers do at rest stops. Prime Video the party guest is there because they always bring fancy wine or because the host is afraid if they’re not invited, they’ll find out and tell everyone how often the host orders aftermarket boner pills, because they’re pissed off. If you invited all the streamers to happy hour and Prime Video was the only one who could make it, you’d cancel and we’d all understand – even Prime Video.

  
  

• Paramount + - It’s not a party without Paramount +! You know who said that? Paramount +. I understand that Paramount + has every episode of Survivor that’s ever aired, but that’s like telling someone that you’ve got a sixth toe and the doctors can’t figure out why. “Well that’s something.” Is that what I’m supposed to say back to that? Yes, you’ve got RuPaul’s Drag Race, and that will score you an invitation to the party, but you should definitely look into branching out into content that more people are interested in. And don’t you dare bring up the Mean Girls musical movie. Someone should have asked Karen’s boobs to forecast how good that movie was going to be. And listened when they said, “not fetch.”

  
  

• Disney + - This motherfucker makes me enter a PIN when I open the app as if the entire central time zone has access to my Apple TV. You’re special, but you’re not that special, Disney +. I bet if Disney + was at a party, after the second a person said, “hello,” to them, they’d get all flustered, like they were overwhelmed with all the attention everyone was pouring on them. Really, people are just being baseline polite and The Mandalorian isn’t worth all this nonsense. Disney +, do you remember last year when you kept telling me to finish watching the four hour, Frozen-themed Yule log clip? That’s the kind of detachment from reality that keeps you from forming meaningful relationships with people.

  
  

• Hulu – I bet when Hulu first gets to the party, they’re a lot of fun to talk to. It’s like, “Oh, hey, this person is interesting. They’ve got a point of view I hadn’t considered before. They somehow look really casual, yet very put together and their shirt doesn’t have stains on it.” But, like the last couple seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, there will come a point in the evening where you realize this person has lost their fucking mind. Oh, Arbor Day is a hoax put on by paper companies to distract you from child labor violations? I see. You were just coaxing me into letting my guard down before you brought out the extreme material. Gotcha. I see you’ve got Romy and Michel’s High School Reunion on your home screen, but you’ve also got The Hot Chick. That’s some real bait-and-switch bullshit, my friend. As Tyra Banks shouted at a contestant on America’s Next Top Model once, “I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you! How dare you!”

  
  

• Peacock – Peacock is not for everyone, but it is for me. It’s got everything I need when I’ve got a couple hours to kill: Real Housewives, Brooklyn 99, WWE from the 80s (before I knew half of those involved were deeply terrible people). I would pay for an annual subscription, just to watch The Traitors. But recommending a streamer is a lot like recommending a size 32 pair of jeans. It may be the right size for you, but it’s not the right size for a juicier ass. If Peacock were making small talk at a party, I think they’d keep it mostly on the level and then at some point just throw in a bon mot, such as, “I once prank called Drew Barrymore from Angelina Jolie’s beach house and told her I was Cameron Diaz and asked her to co-sign a car loan, then left her on hold for 40 minutes.” And I’d be like, “I don’t know what’s happening, but I know I like it.”

  
  

• Netflix – Do you remember on the early seasons of Friends, there was a character named, “Fun Bobby”? He’d been around forever and was always a good time. Netflix is the Fun Bobby of streamers. I bet Netflix has a thousand hilarious stories about the different ways that people lost DVDs back in the day. “They said that someone broke into their house and stole the DVD, so it wasn’t their fault that they couldn’t send it back. I told them, with a straight face, ‘You’re telling me that someone broke into your house and stole a copy of Independence Day? Was it Vivica A. Fox since it was her last good movie?’” But behind the Netflix good time façade, they’re still not over how everyone said they were going to go down, just like Blockbuster. “That shit hurts. It hurts DEEP,” says Netflix after their second THC-infused cider. Netflix has so many FEELINGS, you guys.

  
  

• Max – Do you remember a couple years ago when HBOMax “rebranded” themselves and now they’re just named “Max?” What in the actual fuck? That is not a rhetorical question, Max. That is the streamer equivalent of someone getting a haircut and just assuming that no one will recognize them because they’re parting their hair on the other side now. Outside of these kind of pretentious shenanigans, I do think Max would be fun at a party. I bet they would exchange glances with you when that one person (aka Disney +) just hijacks every conversation and makes it about themselves. I bet Max would complain if you asked them to take off their shoes because it would “ruin their outfit,” but would laugh when you told them it wasn’t the lack of shoes that ruined the outfit. I also think they’d have weed edibles and would share.

Takeaway Quote of the Week

“If you ain’t losing your mind, you ain’t partying right.”

– Young Jeezy, also me when I’m trying to find the Real Housewives of Orange County on Peacock when that bastard knows god damn well I’m going to watch the new episode, just like I watched the last one, but still makes me use the search function.

Heath Smith is co-host of Fuzzy Memories, the podcast that celebrates the good, the rad and the fugly of the 80s and 90s. He was once asked by a cast member of MTV’s Road Rules if he was from Puerto Rico. In his free time, he enjoys Mariah Carey a normal and healthy amount. For a good time, follow him on Instagram.

Why "Donzerly Light"? Heath says: In elementary school, I thought "donzerly light" was part of the lyrics of the national anthem. I didn't realize that the actual words were "dawn's early light." I just assumed "donzerly" was an old-timey word that meant "majestic" or something like that. My middle school social studies teacher, who thought I was trying to make a joke with “donzerly,” would be 100% irritated by naming my column this way, and that makes it even better.