THE AGE OF WAY TOO MUCH TV

In the world of excess-tainment, where does the epic sprawl of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power fit in? For you, maybe nowhere-and that's okay.

- EVAN ROMANO

REMEMBER WHEN watching TV used to be fun? About a decade ago, following popular television meant keeping up with a handful of tentpole shows. As long as you took in the meth-cook madness of Breaking Bad, embraced the '60s sleaze of Mad Men, and kept your goblet full for Game of Thrones, you were basically set. Ah, yes, those were the days: Netflix was still in the fight for streaming dominance, big networks were in a post-Lost relevance recession, and Law & Order filled in the gaps.

Now TV is work. You've already read about the number of services (Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, and so on) and the sheer volume of programming, but now there's the issue of length. What was once the 22-minute-episode standard of The Simpsons grew into the 49 minutes of Breaking Bad and then ballooned into Game of Thrones' 57-minute mini-movies. (Inventing Anna, I want all those hours of my life back.) You used to watch one episode a week and be caught up. Now you can watch weeks' worth of TV and still never feel that way.