Having a top secret element of a show—or even its finale—spoiled makes most of us mad. What, you didn’t know that (name redacted) was the mother of the red-headed baby from Sainte-Piété Falls in Witches to VAT? Oops. So sorry.
For an invested and devoted TV fan, there is nothing worse than an overly talkative (enthusiastic, I might add) columnist or a friend on her fourth Aperol spritz who scraps a big punch anticipated for 12 weeks. A thousand apologies, really.
These damned spoilers of the devil, which burst unannounced on Facebook or sneakily infiltrate an Instagram post, sabotage your listening and make you scream a rosary of church words.
It’s annoying, absolutely. But there’s an even more irritating phenomenon: self-disclosure. Yes, it’s possible to ruin the viewing of your favorite TV series yourself, without being able to blame a drunk girlfriend or a journalist who’s too happy to have seen several episodes in advance.
Self-spoiling, you should know, is never intentional. It results from a healthy curiosity or a legitimate need to clear up tangled plots, which then suck us into the depths of Reddit and the pages of completely obsessed fans. And they don’t get bogged down in polite formulas like: “spoiler alert, stop reading immediately if you haven’t watched the latest episode.”
It’s bing, bang, pow, welcome to this liquidation of spoilersit’s an all-you-can-eat buffet like at Saveurs des Continents in Mascouche.
A concrete example of self-disclosure? Last week, I was trying to draw the Targaryen family tree in The Dragon House (House of the Dragonon the Crave platform), where brothers sleep with their sisters and whose children then marry their uncles. In short, it’s complex and very twisted.
After a two and a half second search, bam, I knew how this TV series would end, which dragon would eat who, which main character would die and how, damn it.
I didn’t ask for anything so specific, though. I never wanted to get those unpleasant details. Still, this unsolicited information has polluted my listening and now I have to live with the consequences, including shutting my mouth to protect your virginity. What a sacrifice, really.
I have to say that The Dragon House book drift Fire and Bloodwhich was published by writer George RR Martin in November 2018. So the ending of this neo-medieval fantasy saga has been known for almost six years. Google at your own risk.
More and more series inspired by popular books multiply the risks of self-disclosure among viewers.
I think about Bridgerton, The Handmaid’s Tale, Normal People, My Brilliant Friend, Surprising Detective, Pachinko Or Outlander. A quick look at Wikipedia and you can make a lot of people sweat by burning all the punches to come.
The biggest danger of self-disclosure currently concerns the excellent crime miniseries Presumed innocent from Apple TV+, available in French and English. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the lead role, that of Rusty Sabich, the assistant attorney general of Chicago accused of the heinous murder of his fellow lawyer and lover Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve).
But Presumed innocentit is first a novel by Scott Turow, released in 1987. Then this thriller was adapted into a film in 1990 by Alan J. Pakula. We agree here that it is easy to find out whether Rusty Sabich killed Carolyn Polhemus or not. The key to the enigma has been circulating for 37 years, in multiple copies.
At the time I saw the movie Presumed innocent starring Harrison Ford, but I completely forgot the ending, thank goodness. Like many of you, I eagerly await Wednesdays when new episodes of Presumed innocent. There are only two left and no one has yet revealed the conclusion, which is a miracle.
The seventh hour of a total of eight, which I saw in preview last weekend and which you will see Wednesday, ends with a stunning twist. Like: the week of anxiety before the release of the last episode will be terribly long.
I didn’t think I’d like this retelling of a classic legal story as much as I did, but it’s been brilliantly revisited by writer and producer David E. Kelley, the magician behind it. Big Little Lies, Ally McBeal And Nine Perfect Strangers.
To return to the spoilers, who have still not affected Presumed innocentknow that they do not alter the satisfaction and commitment that we feel towards a television program, according to a study published in the specialized journal Applied Cognitive Psychologyin April 2023.
Two groups of students aged 18 to 24 then watched the episode of the series Bang! You’re Dead! directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1961. The first group knew nothing about the story, which lasted 30 minutes. The second group had been informed of the ending before the experiment began.
Bottom line: The group that knew what was going to happen in the episode was as invested in the plot as the group that was discovering it for the first time. And both groups expressed equal pleasure in immersing themselves in Alfred Hitchcock’s universe.
Of course it’s better and more enjoyable to discover for yourself the unexpected twist in your favorite series. We can console ourselves with the knowledge that even if a tipsy person revealed to us that (identity retracted) would be killed in In Memoriamwe’re still going to have fun watching the episodes one after the other.