New exclusive club for people who are behind in their TV shows
By Aidan Mouellic, Staff Writer
I am a late bloomer. I don’t enjoy taking unnecessary risks and tend to get around to things later than most. This includes watching acclaimed films and television series. Because of my procrastination, I often feel left out.
Take AMC’s Breaking Bad: by the time I started watching the series, about a year after all five seasons had already aired, the enthusiasm I had for the series and the desire to discuss the plot with others was not reciprocated.
“We all watched Breaking Bad when it aired on TV—now it’s old and we’re bored talking about it,” explains my best friend, Geoff. It seems that people can get too much of a good thing.
Luckily for slow watchers like me, Mark Canterbury is a Vancouver resident who shared my dilemma and did something about it. Canterbury founded TV-Talkers, a club where people can discuss an old series with enthusiasm long after the series originally aired on television.
So far, the club has dozens of members from all over the Lower Mainland who enjoy squeezing their $8 worth of joy out of their Netflix memberships.
“Our members lead busy lives and cannot always watch shows when they air on TV, so Netflix allows them to catch up with society, and TV-Talkers allows them to dissect series with others in the same boat,” says Canterbury.
Just like a book club, TV-Talkers chooses which show to watch as a group, and then discusses the series as a whole; sometimes the club even watches episodes together at the clubhouse.
Spoilers are strictly banned from the TV-Talkers club—but that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been incidents. When I was at the clubhouse interviewing Canterbury, a ruckus sprouted in the background. We left Canterbury’s office only to discover a few longtime members in a heated scuffle with a new member who had disclosed the events of the series finale of Lost. The new member turned out to be a saboteur who had joined the club to caused trouble.
I caught up with the saboteur afterwards and he told me “This whole TV-Talkers club is freaking lame and sad. Those wankers need to get a life, and I hope that their reactions to my spoilers proved that.”
The saboteur wished to stay anonymous, but his actions are not unique. Canterbury says that every so often they get troublemakers trying to join the club just to make fun of the current membership of stay-at-home Netflixer’s, but he is usually pretty good at making sure they don’t get in.
