Binge-watching usually means watching multiple episodes, often a whole season, of some TV series in one sitting. This is, of course, a recent phenomenon, made possible by modern technology. I suppose it would have been possible back in the days of VHS video recordings but you didn’t hear of anybody sitting up all night to watch a whole series in one go on the video player.
Now, if you watch one season after another of a TV series, watching only one episode per night, not overdoing the watching on any one evening, does it still count as binge-watching? If so, then Phil and I are serious binge-watchers! Sometimes we have had to take a break to wait for the next season of a series to be released. If the wait is too long we have re-watched the earlier season in order to refresh our aging memories of characters and scenarios. On at least one occasion we have begun watching the “latest” season of a series, then found ourselves perplexed and puzzled as events don’t quite match up. That’s when we discover that there has been a season in between the last one we saw and this latest release. You have to be on the ball to be a binge-serial-watcher!
This reflection on binge-watching has come about because of our current viewing. We rarely watch seres live on television. Game shows and reality TV don’t interest us. Probably the only stuff we watch live is the news and Match of the Day - well, Phil watches it and I read my book with half an eye on what is happening on screen. But we do like to watch an episode of something or other together most evenings. And so we have become acquainted with Spanish bank robbers, South American drug dealers and numerous detectives of a range of nationalities. Incidentally, we learnt quite a lot of Scandinavian language in that way!
Some time ago there was a serious dearth of stuff online that we might want to watch. New seasons of series we had enjoyed were promised but for some time in the future. And so we turned to our collection of DVDs. And there we found series one of “Justified”. I think we must have bought it when were living in Spain as we had to change the default language setting from Spanish to English. We still needed subtitles as American English is not quite the same as Greater Manchester English. Having watched series one, we sought out later series and found them on Amazon Prime, for which we discovered we had an accidental subscription.
We’re now coming towards the end of last of the recorded seasons. The advertising tells us there is a “last and final season”, currently released episode by episode on Tuesday evenings. I think we might have catch up with that as well.
Set mostly in or near Harlan, Kentucky, but according to Wikipedia never actually filmed in that town, it tells of US deputy marshals and their exploits. In the background is the relationship / friendship / ongoing rivalry between Raylan Givens, played by the unlikely-named Timothy Olyphant, and Boyd Crowder, played by the equally unlikely-named Walton Goggins. These two had been to school together in Harlan and had worked in the coal-mines together before branching off into separate careers: Raylan Givens as a US deputy marshal and Boyd Crowder as a bank robber and would-be drug baron.
The very first episode opens with deputy marshal Raylan Givens in his cowboy hat in Miami reminding a criminal that the he had given him 24 hours to get out of town or be shot. The criminal does not believe him. The marshal shoots the baddie in the good old-style-western manner. And that seems to be how a lot of the law enforcement goes. Baddies end up shot - and mostly shot dead rather than just incapacitated. The baddies do a whole lot more killing in a number of sometimes imaginative ways (poisoned moonshine, for example).
Here are links to a couple of songs relating to Harlan, Kentucky. The first is by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, included because I love their songs and because this one, new to me, is about Going Back to Harlan.
The second, “You’ll never leave Harlan alive”, is used as the closing music at the end of each season.
We speculated the other evening about the impossibility of transferring the series to another country. We couldn’t think any place where the guns would be quite so readily accessible for the settling of family feuds and criminal rivalries. Nor where that gun culture is so accepted as a kind of normality. The latest mass shooting took place earlier this week, also in Kentucky, when a bank employee shot dead five people and injured eight others, apparently because he had lost his job. He was also shot dead by the police.
Here are some facts and figures about guns in the USA:
“There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey (SAS). No other nation has more civilian guns than people.
The Falkland Islands – a British territory in the southwest Atlantic Ocean, claimed by Argentina and the subject of a 1982 war – is home to the world’s second-largest stash of civilian guns per capita. But with an estimated 62 guns per 100 people, its gun ownership rate is almost half that of the US. Yemen – a country in the throes of a seven-year conflict – has the third-highest gun ownership rate at 53 guns per 100 people.
While the exact number of civilian-owned firearms is difficult to calculate due to a variety of factors – including unregistered weapons, the illegal trade and global conflict – SAS researchers estimate that Americans own 393 million of the 857 million civilian guns available, which is around 46% of the world’s civilian gun cache.
About 44% of US adults live in a household with a gun, and about one-third own one personally, according to an October 2020 Gallup survey.”
Despite the mass shootings, Americans still seem to feel the need to own guns that to me seem like weapons of war (assault rifles, for goodness sake!) rather than a pistol you might want to own for personal protection, carrying it in your handbag or pocket, keeping it on the bedside table. Not that I am advocating such small-gun ownership. Far from it!
And according to this article the governor of Florida would like to introduce a law allowing “permitless carry” of guns in his state. Some other states already allow their citizens to carry weapons around without the need for a special permit or special training! Wild West here we come!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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