Here's a rare case for me.
I start watching a random "hot new" show pushed onto my main Apple + TV launch page, as they like to do with all their new shit, back about three years ago. It's a spy thriller with a lot of quirky humor and a shit ton of super-hard-to-understand British accents. But it's slick and features Gary Oldman who is, IMHO, one of the greatest actors alive so I stick it out even though I'm getting only half the plot because of the aforementioned mush-mouthed slangy Brit-speak but also the super-fast pacing and highly-intricate multi-threaded arcs and plot twists. Well, probably not that intricate but, you know, my brain ain't what it used to be and I think I watched a few episodes "whilst" (threw in a little Brit word there) imbibing a few glug glug juices to keep up with "me mate, me fellow Joe, that ol' twat Jackson Lamb" (I'm turnin' bloody Limey, blimey!)
Anyway, long story short, either one of two things happen. I either decide to drop the show right before the last episode of the end of the first season (oh, I mean "series" in Brit-speak) out of disinterest or, and this is the likely path, I cancel Apple + TV 'cause Foundation is done for that year, 2022.
Now, this past week, this show has been plastered again up on my launch page since it's starting its fifth season. When I saw that ad and watched bit of its trailer I literally said to myself "Oh, wait, didn't I watch a little of that a couple years ago?" Yep. Fuckin' Shameless Syndrome again. I checked the episode timeline and sure enough I'd watched five episodes. I tried to pick up where I'd left off, where the idiot dudes are kidnapping this Pakistani-British guy and the Slow Horses are trying to sus out where they're taking him in their van...
Oh yeah, that's the name of the show: Slow Horses
Well, I can't remember shit and I actually have to rewatch the whole season from the beginning.
And one season rolled easily into the next. I got more adjusted to the Brit-speak. I learned to stop wincing when one of the main players got killed off as if this was a modern-day Game of Thrones set in the world of rogue and even-more-rogue spies and bad actors.
Then, after two, or has it been three, sleepless nights of non-stop watching, it was over. I'm done with the first episode of the fifth season and I now have to queue up with all the other rejects who can't hack it at the Park, sift through the pile of garbage on my dirty office floor that is every other offering on the telly and shuffle off to my own personal corner of Slough House, prayin' ol' smelly Lamb doesn't fart his noxious fumes in my direction too heartily. Or maybe that's just what I need? Not sure, but I'll be there for it next Wednesday.