Ding!

“Who’s watching?”

“The Kids,” you answer, even though that is not factually accurate. You and your wife do not have kids. What you do have is a shared Netflix account, a fusion of your tastes engineered with half your TV-viewing DNA and half hers, an account built for compromise. It’s the closest thing to joint custody you’ve experienced.

In a bright red room full of well-lit windows framing highly saturated scenes of sex and destruction, everything from Bridgerton to the latest carnivalesque Marvel IP orgy, you wave the remote in front of you like a flashlight.

“Hurry,” your wife Lauren implores. “The Autoplay!”

You have to move quickly to stay ahead of it. Once the Autoplay starts, it is too late.

“Wait,” says Lauren. You pause in a row of Politically Incorrect Sitcoms.

“There, down below,” she says. “In the corner.”

“The one with the sharks?” you say.

“Yes! But hurry! It gets faster by the second.”

You descend into a row of Campy Reality TV Shows, navigate past the windows of Instagram-optimized bodies, and land on a show called Rough Waters, a 96% match for The Kids.

Without warning, it begins. The conceit is revealed in the second minute: in Rough Waters ten smoking-hot men in speedos and ten smoking-hot women in bikinis are given scuba gear and dropped into a mansion-sized shark cage, where they hope to find true love. They go on dates, develop crushes, get jealous, get dumped, and make unbelievable promises, all while three dozen tiger and hammerhead sharks circle the cage, ramming it from time to time for good measure.

“Do you think the sharks are in on it?” you ask.

“I hope not,” says Lauren. “That would ruin it for me.”

At the end of Episode 3, Mindy, forlorn after missing her shot with Brandon, leaves the cage to be with one of the sharks, George, a 13-year-old tiger shark she fell in love with over long talks through the stainless steel bars. She is promptly eaten.

“That was Episode 3?” says Lauren.

“Yeah, pretty quick escalation,” you say.

“Have we really been watching for three hours?”

“Yup.”

“I feel gross. Do you think that’s too much TV?”

“I dunno. Maybe you feel gross because you just watched a live shark tear a beautiful young woman limb from limb.”

“You think she’s beautiful?”

“Uh, not anymore.”

“I think I feel weird because the shark was in on it. Either way, let’s find something calmer.”

You search for a comfortable, nostalgic IP to rest your eyes on. You come across Ed, Edd, and Eddy.

“Remember these guys?” you say.

“Yeah, they were funny.”

Ed, Edd, and Eddy All Grown Up starts to play. The three titular heroes, unshaven and balding in their 30’s, recline on a dirty couch in a bare, fratty basement, drinking beer. Well, Edd drinks White Claw. In each episode the trio goes on a quest to get laid, only to fail in spectacular fashion. Inexplicably, they all have herpes. In the finale of Season 1, “The Restraining Order,” Eddy finds out his mom has terminal cancer and misses his chance to see her before she dies because he’s too busy camping out in the youngest Kanker sister’s driveway with binoculars to spy on her and her husband’s sex life, despite the restraining order.

“Ugh,” Lauren says. “Getting that feeling again.”

“I thought this show would be lighter. But it was recommended because we watched Bojack Horseman.”

“My brain needs a deep clean. What’s Marie Kondo up to these days?”

“Not sure. It’s been a minute.”

You search her name and land on the queen of decluttering’s latest show, The Definitive Wardrobe with Marie Kondo. As soon as it starts, you’re struck by the gleam of her elegant gold-clasped shoulder bag.

“Is that Versace?” says Lauren.

Indeed it is, because for The Definitive Wardrobe, Miss Kondo has partnered with Italian luxury fashion company Versace. Her pantsuit, at once both form-fitting and billowy, is iconic. She helps the show’s guests by clearing out their closets, pawning off their entire wardrobes, and using the money to buy them one Versace item each.

“With only one article of clothing in your wardrobe, you save an incredible amount of time and space,” she tells an apprehensive businesswoman, handing her a pair of black Pin-Point Pumps. “And because it’s Versace,” Kondo adds. “It’s guaranteed to spark joy!”

“I like this,” says Lauren.

“I don’t,” you say. “The whole show is one long commercial. It’s boring.”

“Well alright then. What do you suggest we watch?”

“Why don’t we see what Netflix recommends,” you say.

“…”

“That ok?”

“Ok.”

“You sure?”

“What if TV is an inherently disappointing medium, and that’s what makes it so addicting?” Lauren says.

“You mean we leave one show feeling disappointed and start the next one in the hope that it will fill the void the other couldn’t?”

“Right. But if TV ever actually filled that void, we would stop needing it. So it won’t. We keep on wishing, and TV keeps on promising us our wish will come true, but never delivers.”

“I dunno. I think I was just trying to unwind.”

“But don’t you think it’s like that, deep down? With disappointment at the heart of it all?”

“Maybe,” you say. “Or maybe we just haven’t found the right show yet. But hey, if we have to wade through some garbage on the path to transcendence, who gives a shit? It’s just TV. Let’s find that life-changing show. Let’s find the One.”

Lauren sighs and picks up the remote. “Alright.”

Judging from its recommendations, Netflix seems to know that The Kids are adults, teens, or at the very least, precociously horny pre-teens. Lords of Pleasure Manor; Manic Gymnastics; Role Reversal; Kundalini Country; and Naked and Afraid are all 99% matches for you. You hover over the summaries.

Lords of Pleasure Manor is a Survivor ripoff where the losers of each challenge have to be ‘serfs’ and work the field of the massive estate, while the winner gets to stay in the estate’s luxurious manor and order them to do whatever they want (Netflix’s emphasis).

In Manic Gymnastics a group of 12 well-built bipolar gymnasts are invited to skip three nights of sleep then compete in an Olympic-style gymnastics competition scored by an international and highly critical panel of judges. Paramedics and therapists are on hand for the aerial events.

Role Reversal brings eight lucky queer couples to Opposite Island, a cerulean-watered paradise in Micronesia where the tops are bottoms and the bottoms are tops.

Kundalini Kountry follows a determined white man’s journey through India in search of a reclusive woman said to be the foremost expert on Kundalini yoga. It may not be overtly sexual, but all the women he meets on the show seem improbably hot, toned, and underdressed. Plus the yoga’s downright nasty.

Naked and Afraid is what it sounds like.

“None of these feel like the One,” you say.

“Agreed,” Lauren says. “Should we just pay for HBO and rewatch The Sopranos?”

“No! We need something new. A show we’ve already seen can’t be life-changing.”

“Fuck!” Club music blares and Lauren swings the remote at the phantom Autoplay.  

The show that autoplayed, Felicity and June, a six-part docuseries about a snarky pair of freelance anesthesiologists party-hopping across the American Southwest in a Sprinter van, explores the various possibilities of anesthesia in and out of the hospital and is at least a bit interesting. But alas, it’s not the One.

Lauren turns to face you, though out of the corner of her eye she keeps a leary watch over the Autoplay.

“Let’s try something different,” she says. “I’m going to describe what I want to see, and you’re going to find it.”

“Roger that.”

“Ok. It’s a drama, but there are moments of comedic relief, it’s set in a post-industrial town in the Midwest, the cast is mostly women, they fight over loyalty and trust issues but never over men, the conflict at the story’s core is complex, intergenerational, and probably unsolvable, and one of the women is played by SZA.”

“I don’t know if she acts.”

“The last part’s flexible.”

“Hmmm… I’ll see what I can do.”

She hands you the remote. Searching for specific parameters on Netflix is like trying to find the three-course meal you’re craving in the prepared food section of CostCo: the best you can do is get close. Luckily, there’s a category called TV Dramas Based on Real Life.

“Is this just True Crime?” says Lauren.

She may be right. I Just Killed My Dad; Bad Vegan: Frame Fraud Fugitives; My First Spree; The Ripper; The Media Murdered My Daughter; Paper Trails and Max-Security Jails; The World Is Crowded and Killing Feels Good; Tiger King…

“You know,” you say. “I actually never saw Tiger King.”

“You missed your window.”

“What about The Media Murdered My Daughter? Sounds sorta feminist.”

“If I wanted to watch a true drama about a mother lamenting her daughter’s disappearance I would just visit my mom.”

“K.”

“Let’s face it, we’re never going to find the One.”

“So let’s watch literally anything,” you say. “I’m bored.”

“But that’s it! That’s the problem. Maybe you need to do something real about your boredom.”

“Like what? Watch a film?”

“No, like, find a hobby, or whatever.”

You have to admit, what Lauren’s saying makes sense. The low hum of anxiety you feel about never doing a single meaningful, productive, or genuinely engaging thing fuels your TV consumption. To quiet the hum, you can either doomscroll your way to the next Critically Acclaimed Bingeworthy TV Show, or leave the platform and a find a better way to spend your time.

But even if you found it, fulfillment is so fleeting a thing. Nothing escapes impermanence. Before long, you’d find yourself right back where you started, on the couch, bored by the latest meal you cooked, or language you learned, or wall of fake rocks you climbed.

“Maybe I like being bored,” you say. “What if this is all I want from life?”

“No one likes being bored. It feels bad. Boredom can be useful if the bad feeling spurs you into action, but you’re avoiding that. You’re just lazy.”

“I prefer the term commitmophobic.”

“Suit yourself,” Lauren says, narrowly avoiding an autoplay of The Secret and Heartbreakingly Violent Life of Snails.

“But to show you I’m not lazy, I’m gonna cultivate a hobby.”

“And how do you plan to do that?”

“With the help of television.”

You take the remote from Lauren and search. Once you’ve typed “How to build a—” you see it, the show that will launch your future hobby. How to Build a Hydroponic Garden starring Woody Harrelson.

Lauren groans. “Where’s the bong?” she says.

In How to Build a Hydroponic Garden starring Woody Harrelson, Woody Harrelson is just like everyone else, an affable Texan stoner born to a convicted hitman father who is simply trying to make the world a little better by helping people garden. It’s his first time playing himself since Cheers. He’s witty, polite, and patient in his demonstrations of spray manifolds made from PVC pipe, and by the second episode, Lauren has fallen under the spell of his gap-toothed charm.

“Garden or no garden,” she says. “I’m watching this whole show.”

“Oh, there’ll be a garden alright. Just you wait.”

You come back from Home Depot with 12 three-inch hydroponic mesh net cups with neoprene collars, 1 eighteen-gallon latch and carry bin, 12 feet of PVC pipe, 2 PVC elbows, 7 PVC tees, 16 hydroponic sprayers, and 1 submersible fountain pump, feeling like a do-er. Lauren is on Episode 5.

“I didn’t realize you were taking the easy route,” she says, eyeing your lame 18-gallon latch and carry bin. “Woody says even complete beginners can handle the intermediate method. It just takes care and focus. And a bit of love.”

“I guess you want to help me then, now that you’re an expert,” you say.

“No, no, I like watching.”

She looks blissful in her corner of the couch. High, yes, and pleased by the tone and pace of this show that ambles lackadaisically through green spaces like a golf broadcast, but you also detect an appreciation, and perhaps even some pride, in the action that you, her partner, have been spurred into taking.

“Don’t get too full of yourself,” she says with a wry smile. “You haven’t even installed the hydroponic sprayers yet. Woody says humility is the handyman’s most essential tool.” With a yawn, she curls up under a blanket and nods off.

You rewind to the demo of the ‘easy’ hydroponic garden, watch it a couple more times, then take your supplies into the guest room and get to work. It takes three hours, one more than Woody estimated, but in the end, your garden-in-a-bin looks pretty good.

You carry it into the living room to show Lauren, bellowing with excitement, “Do you and Woody think we should plant spinach, kale, or loose-leaf lettuce?”

No response, though Woody’s advice meanders on. “If you’re thinking of planting some of the devil’s lettuce, hehehe, just don’t tell them federales I taught ya how.”

Only when you’re standing over the couch looking squarely at her do you realize what’s become of Lauren. In the time it took you to build the garden, she has turned into a pothos. Her long, bony arms have become vines dotted with waxy leaves of green streaked by white and yellow. Where she once had a neck and head, several stems curl into a gnarled, unintelligent clump. Her roots grip the couch cushions.

“Lauren?” you say. But she is mute. She doesn’t look thirsty, you think. You reach into the couch to confirm, and it feels damp enough. She has water. You draw back the curtains, letting the sun pour over her flourishing veins. In the late-afternoon light, you take a moment to observe your verdant lover. Has she ever looked this alive? She is definitely a variegated pothos, not a jade pothos, which is good because variegated pothos are rarer. If you ever have to sell her… No, you would never let it come to that. You’ll look after her no matter what it takes: focus, care, love, secrecy. Besides, pothos are the easiest houseplant. They’re quite adaptable.

But why did she do it? In Greek mythology, metamorphosing into a plant saved you from unhappiness at the cost of future happiness. Is that what she wanted? If she was unhappy with you, why didn’t she say so? Her transforming into a pothos feels like a miscommunication. If only she’d seen your hydroponic garden.

You and Lauren go on to live many pleasant years together: she, rooted firmly on the couch, and you, bustling about the apartment, pruning her excess vines that trail all over your home getting tangled on chandeliers and curtain rods, and tending to your ever-expanding hydroponic garden. And anytime you log into Netflix, you do so as The Kids, imagining and accounting for Lauren’s input whenever you pick a show.

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