The service I'm talking about, yet again, is Netflix. Yes I've canceled and restarted Netflix half a dozen times over the last 15 years or so I'm sure. My most recent subscription was down to the cheapest of cheapest plans where I get 720p max, I think up to two or three devices, and with ad interruptions.
Admittedly, they don't overload you with ads. Usually about two, maybe three maximum per hour for TV shows and maybe one or two for a movie. But with tax it still eight bucks a month. And lately I found that YouTube Premium, even though it's in the $16 a month range, provides just so much more than I ever dreamed of. But the one good thing Netflix has is it carries full complete TV series of top quality shows that originally aired on premium pay channel services like Showtime and HBO.
My current binge was found totally on accident clicking on one of those YouTube shorts that showed a couple of characters from the show getting caught in a compromising situation and I thought it looked funny. I dug a little deeper and found out it was this show named "Shameless" and that it was on, yup, Netflix. I had seen place cards for this TV series before and I seem to recall a little buzz about it during its run on Showtime primarily in the tens but I didn't pay much mind to it enough to learn what it was about. I think I heard something to the tune that it was about a hard scrabble family in a working class neighborhood in a midwestern city and that it was a tongue-in-cheek irreverent comedy and I thought "Oh something like It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia or whatever the name of that show is." I tried to get into that show a bit once and it was okay but it got tedious after a few episodes and I thought this would be the same so I never bothered to look much into it.
Well I just finished the first season and I'm freaking in love with it. It is so out there with absolutely crazy characters doing all sorts of off the wall stuff. Some of the antics and episode plots can get quite over the top but the characters seem to have a real connection with one another and I can only imagine the bond will be even greater over time.
And oh, there will be time. This show went on for 11 seasons. I'm trying to be very careful in any little bit of research I do on it since with such a long legacy I can easily stumble upon devastating spoilers. For instance in simply trying to get the picture for this post, I initially made the mistake of just trying to summon up a query of simply "Shameless" without narrowing it to season one and when I clicked on images I glanced at a picture of the cast as it probably will look in a later season with a much older looking family which I could easily immediately identify by the little black baby Liam now being a full-grown teenager and I immediately went: yikes, no!
I already found out a spoiler that Ian and Mickey who just hooked up a few episodes ago are going to later get married and then I found out in another accidental spoiler that I guess somewhere around some much later season Ian is sent to prison. I can't know things like this too soon. I mean with all the hijinks happening already by the 12th episode into the show, I already fully expect that the likelihood that Frank will survive to the very end is probably going to be iffy at best although I hope he lasts since William H. Macy is absolutely terrific in this role, yet so far it looks like he's going to drink himself to death before each episode. I can't imagine a show lasting 11 years without any major changes to the cast but I want to have these changes happen organically, not as a spoiler.
So yeah Netflix and the secretive AI that lures people back from the brink of subscription cancellation, I guess you'll win for now. It's worth at least another eight bucks to see what happens to the Gallagher clan.