Anticipation TV: In celebration of waiting together for the next episode

Remember “Must-See TV”?

For decades, this was how the Thursday-night lineup on NBC was marketed as that was when all the network’s most popular sitcoms aired. Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, Mad About You, Cheers and Wings were part of the original ’90s Must-See TV lineup, a tradition that was carried on through the 2000s-10s with shows such as Parks & Recreation, The Office, Community and 30 Rock. The two-hour comedy block was followed by a prestige drama at 9 p.m., before the news.

At the risk of sounding like a Things Were Better Back When scold, this really was a golden age for viewers. It was a scheduled time to catch up on your stories, but it also functioned as a community builder.

All the new episodes from the night before were discussed and debated and quoted around watercoolers at the office or desks in the classroom on Friday morning, and if you missed them or had them waiting on a VHS tape or something, well, sucked to be you.

This was Appointment Television. Best be on time.

The Pitt, the hit HBO Max medical drama which began its second season on Thursday night, feels like a welcome return to Appointment Television. For one, it shares a lot of DNA with ER, the other John Wells-produced medical drama which, for 15 seasons, dominated Must-See TV’s drama slot. We can literally once again watch Noah Wyle play a doctor on Thursdays at 9 p.m.

But crucially, it has a weekly episode release schedule and, at 15 episodes, is a positively throwback-sized season of television that will take us through April.

The Pitt — which stars Wyle as Dr. Michael (Robby) Robinavitch as the attending physician of the emergency department of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, a.k.a. “the Pitt” — is not the only show to return to the weekly format of late. But it is one that a lot of people are watching, making it feel, despite being a fresh, of-the-moment show, oddly nostalgic.

With the advent of streaming in the 2010s, Appointment TV was replaced by Peak TV, an unscalable glut of content with entire seasons being dumped on platforms to be watched in a weekend or, if someone was really ambitious, a single day.

This completely changed how we consume TV. Gone were the days where everyone watched the same sitcoms on Thursday nights; now we could watch anything, anywhere, anytime.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Streaming has quite literally opened up a world of content to us, and some of my new faves are British and Australian shows I’d never have seen otherwise, or shows that a traditional network wouldn’t have taken a chance on.

But streaming also ushered in an era of binge-watching, and bingeing anything — whether it’s TV or junk food — starts to feel bad. I could technically wait and binge The Pitt since it’s also streaming, but I like having a standing appointment with my docs every Thursday. It feels good to slow down and savour things after so many years of stuffing ourselves.

More than that, though, it feels good to be part of something resembling “popular culture” again. Watching TV, in the moment, seems like solitary pursuit, but it’s not, not really.

When you’re watching The Thing Everyone Is Watching — or, at least, The Thing A Lot Of People Are Watching — you’re suddenly part of a community, a fandom, a discussion. It’s a low-barrier site of connection and bonding, a chance to be part of something. Slowing down allows this to feel more intentional.

Appointment Television is also good for that; I saw that many people, myself included, spent New Year’s Eve watching the Stranger Things series finale, which was released that evening, and it felt like it did when Seinfeld ended, or when Friends ended, or when The Sopranos ended. It was a thing we experienced together, even if we weren’t physically together.

Heated Rivalry, the “gay Canadian hockey show,” as you might have heard it be referred to, from Letterkenny’s Jacob Tierney, is another current cultural phenomenon many people, myself including, are group-panting over (yes, it’s as hot as everyone says; please continue to take my tax dollars).

It’s worth noting that this show also had a weekly release format. I came to Heated Rivalry — which is about the long-simmering clandestine relationship between major-league hockey rivals Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) — a bit late, but I refused to binge it, instead savouring it over several viewing sessions. Now I’m in, like, 17 different group chats about it. And it’s so fun.

I’d forgotten, after so many years of siloed viewing, what it was like to be part of a collective cultural moment.

winnipegfreepress/jenzoratti