Netflix is Boring. That's by Design.
They are playing to the distracted viewer, but they can’t admit it. Pluribus shows why.
At the 98th Oscars, Conan O’Brian performed a modern retelling of Casablanca where he and Sterling K. Brown explained the plot in excruciating detail. “Of all the gin joints, all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” says O’Brien. “She being Ilsa, right?” replies Brown. It went on from there.
Netflix execs were not entertained.
According to Variety, Netflix found the premise laughable, even absurd. Netflix film chief Dan Lin said, “if you watch our movies or TV shows, we don’t repeat our plot. So I don’t know where that comment came from.”
One guess of where it came from is Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan promoting their Netflix original The Rip, where they suggested that Netflix wanted filmmakers to repeat “the plot three or four times in the dialogue” to account for distracted viewers.
Another is a famous story in N + 1 a few years back chronicling the rise of “casual viewing,” which resulted in stilted, expository dialogue such as this gem from Irish Wish:
[Maddie] We spent a day together. I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.
[James] Fine. That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over, I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.
Or maybe it was season five of Stranger Things where scene after scene was devoted to spelling out what just happened or the Rube Goldberg-style plan for how they would defeat the baddie.
[Eleven] Do you think Dustin is okay?
[Mike] I hope so. He was acting weird today.
[Eleven] Weird how?
[Mike] [sighs] Just angry, scared, reckless. Not himself.
[Eleven] Hopper’s the same. Not himself.
[Mike] Maybe it’s just getting to us, you know? Being… Being stuck in here, not knowing where Vecna is, no end in sight. I mean, we’re really starting to lose it. I mean, we really need to catch a break. And maybe we will. Because earlier, Will had a feeling.
[Eleven] If Will has a feeling…
[Mike] Then it means something.
There’s a saying that your customers tell you what your brand is. Even if no executive ever told a showrunner, “Make it dumber,” there’s a reason this rumor follows Netflix around. A “Netflix Original” connotes derivative, mildly entertaining, ultimately forgettable content. The phrase “Netflix and Chill” does not imply rapt attention. While Netflix does have serious directors like Noah Baumbach and David Fincher making films for them, their three most popular series are Wednesday, Adolescence, and Stranger Things.
And while Stranger Things broke records, the writing in its final season was pilloried for its repetitive, “second-screen” style.
The difference in strategy is clear if you look at another streamer: Apple TV. Apple TV is willing to take risks—partially because Apple is trying to entice new users to add another subscription, partially because their streaming is just one part of Apple’s broader revenue. Instead of milking its users with visual muzak, it must convince prospects to pony up for yet another streamer. That means more original, buzzy shows, as evidenced by their three most popular series: Ted Lasso, Severance, and Pluribus. In fact, Pluribus, the new show from Vince Gilligan, is in many ways a repudiation of what Netflix has become.
Gilligan is no stranger to Netflix—his film El Camino was a Netflix Original and Breaking Bad was one of the first shows that took off on Netflix—yet he took Pluribus to Apple instead. They signed him for two seasons, and he said they’ve been “pretty great” in supporting his unique vision rather than how “a lot of these companies” are looking for something based on “pre-existing intellectual property.”
The premise of Pluribus is that a mysterious virus causes all but 13 people on earth to “join,” meaning all their memories and sensations are united in one overmind. They are compliant, generally benevolent, but committed to bringing the remaining humans into the fold. Rhea Seehorn of Better Call Saul plays Carol Sturka, a misanthropic, lesbian romantasy author who’s unimpressed with this new state of affairs. She wants to go back.
Pluribus touches on major themes of popular sci-fi stories: the right to be unhappy (Brave New World), the hive mind of life online (Black Mirror), a human all alone (The Martian). But to say that it’s “about drugs” or “about AI” or “about COVID” would be reductive. It’s not nearly that didactic, and it’s peppered with all sorts of little, human moments.
Vince Gilligan is famous for these realistic scenes and slow-developing openers. Better Call Saul spends minutes in its pilot episode showing a Cinnabon’s opening preparations, and it takes some time to understand why. In the opening scene of Pluribus, we’re in a bookstore where Sturka is giving a reading, yet Gilligan prolongs the first shot of her face. He explains in that same interview:
I just love showmanship. To me, that is the essence of showmanship: showing the audience something they don’t quite understand at first, and then it slowly dawns on them what it is they’re watching. I think it’s a tonic—a slower form of storytelling. It’s a plus in a world of very fast-paced editing and TikTok videos that are only a minute long. If the whole world were to move at that pace, that TikTok pace of storytelling, that would be very sad to me.
Since the majority of the characters have “joined,” Pluribus is not a show you can half-watch very well. They don’t need to talk to each other, so the drama of the scenes often comes from Carol’s frustration or disgust at these mute servants coming and going. Rather than timidly asking for the audience’s attention, Gilligan demands it. And Seehorn delivers something worth watching.
Gilligan says he hopes that there is a certain percentage of the viewership that’s “large enough to sustain shows like this.” Netflix is betting he’s wrong. I pray he’s right.