I’ve Saved -$199 By Getting Rid Of Cable
As any really dumb millennial has, I have broken free from the archaic chains of cable and moved onto the new-age fiber optic jailhouse of streaming services. Well, actually, I’ve been broken free for awhile now but I wanted to talk about how much I hate these things and have now shot myself in the foot because you can’t just go back to yelling at Xfinity after you’ve been out of practice for so long. You have to train for that shit and I don’t have the mental capacity anymore. To clarify, I don’t hate streaming services as an entity but rather the really shitty ways that they operate and function as apps. If I’m spending my hard-earned American dollars so I can watch Law & Order SVU in three different places, but somehow CANNOT get original Law & Order Seasons 1-12 without paying for each individual episode, then I want that shit to fucking work and work exactly the way I want it to without giving any input to the developers. IT’S MY LAW AND ORDER AND I NEED IT NOW. But, that’s a story for another day. Today on GRB, we’re going to rate each streaming service so you don’t need to stress about which ones to waste your money on.
MAX aka HBO MAX (which is no longer purple and therefore no long for sexy people): Nope, it’s now blue like every fucking other app. Makes it real easy to find in a sea of other blue apps. Great choice HBO! What do I watch on this app? South Park, The Sopranos, and Scooby Doo…and possibly others? Before we get into this, I should mention that I’m not good at TV. I have my comfort shows and you really, REALLY need to make me feel OK before we try something new. Nothing worse than trying something new and hating it, that’s my motto. Anyway, HBO, that’s a household name. Even before we had these apps on our TVs, we had HBO illegally at our homes. We know them, we know their products. So why, might I ask, IS THIS THE SHITTIEST FUNCTIONING THING OUT? Why am I paying $15/month and still getting ads? Why does it shut down and not work like 74% of the time? You guys invented the movie-quality TV show. You guys have a lot of really good movies in your catalogue. This should be your home run derby. You should be knocking that shit out of the park. Yet here I am, not even able to tell where you’re located on my TV BECAUSE SOME IDIOT MADE YOU FUCKING BLUE AFTER WE ALL ADJUSTED TO PURPLE. And it’s not like when you “revamped” things, you did anything to make the app better. You literally just made it blue and dropped the HBO. That’s like a Congressman putting down his clan robe and running as a Democrat. We see you Racist Ronnie. You’re still showing that back room of “historical memorabilia” to your buddies on the weekends after you drop a hard R a few times over that weekend’s football game. We see you not HBO Max. In conclusion, if my logic is correct…MAX = Racist. But I can’t watch The Sopranos anywhere else so it’s staying. 3/10
Paramount+: This app has no fucking clue what its purpose is in the world. Now for those of you who weren’t taught about media conglomerates your first day of college, which ended up sending you deeper and further into the jaded hell of adulthood than you thought humanly possible, let’s break a couple things down. Paramount is under the Viacom umbrella. These are the people behind all the cool guy channels like MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon etc. In 2016, National Amusements (the guys behind the Deluxe movie theaters) said to CBS and Viacom (who have always kind of been merging and breaking off from one another) to be friends and now there is an even bigger conglomerate of media powerhouses. This is obviously a very, very TDLR version of this but if you’d really like to learn about how the gov’t has been controlling us with media since newspapers and radio were invented, you can visit your local library. ANYWAY, I wanted to mention this to you guys so you know why this app has no clue where it belongs on our TVs or in our hearts. If you turn on Paramount+, you’ll get a very odd mix of new releases of shows that are on other apps. For example, notice how South Park’s original seasons are on Max, but the new movies coming out are on Paramount+? This is because Paramount+ owns the rights to those shows but the streaming services that existed before there was a Paramount+ bought the ability to stream them. Basically, if you want an app that has a lot of shit you watch normally on other streaming services but you also want to watch ads and get frustrated that you can’t get everything of one show in one place, this is the one for you. 4/10
Prime: We all know Prime. They own our souls now. Physical items, movies, jobs, for all I know, they’ll have Amazon Healthcare before we have universal healthcare. Good times America. I will say I do like Prime. They have EVERYTHING. Granted, I don’t appreciate paying for some Spirit Airlines à la carte bullshit every time I want to watch John Taffer scream at some idiot who thought that opening a bar with little to no restaurant experience and using it as their own private hotel mini-bar was a good idea. I don’t appreciate that EVERY time you find a new show to watch, they dick tease you with one episode and then go “oh I’m sorry, you need to download a new app and pay $10/month for that” because of course you do to see other episodes and forget all about it and next thing you know you have -$200 because all the shit you forgot about hit. Yes, I am aware that these are first world exaggerations. Thank you Planet Aid, this blog is meant to be humorous. Oh also, points for their documentaries. They have lots of good ones. 7/10.
Hulu: A classic fave. The original two. Yankees and Red Sox. Biggie and 2Pac. Taco Bell/KFC combo restaurant locations. They have lots of shows I watch, and by lots, I mean Golden Girls, ABFab, and CSI. But they have them. No ads, you pay for what you get. The app itself is pleasant to look at, easy to find being that it’s the only green one out, and it’s very simple to use. All of these make my lazy, TV-watching ass go bananas. HOWEVER, up until very recently, their documentary game was LAUGHABLE. Like terrible, terrible, terrible quality. I can’t tell you how many times I tried to watch a documentary that seemed like it would be a nice true crime, filled with secrets and a mystery to solve, and instead it’s the ramblings of several people who lived in the town where the event occurred but actually didn’t know the people involved or were even alive while this happened. Basically what you’d hear at the check out counter at any local convenience store or post office. Like who green lit this producer and said “yep, sure, this looks good, makes complete sense, here’s some Hulu money'“? There’s literally never an ending or a cohesive thought at all. Just the messy, methy “plot” you’d find in an “Always Sunny” episode, except this isn’t supposed to be funny and you’re expecting to solve a crime, not get into a hair-brained scheme with your narcissistic bar buddies. 8/10 - would be 10/10 but I had to dock them for those shitty, awful documentaries.
Netflix: Ah yes, Netflix. What was once a cinematic masterpiece of what late-stage capitalism and post-consumerism could mean for an entire depressed and burnt out generation of failures, well now it’s just a finger painting of that same image. Before we talk about the Mindhunter in the room, let’s talk about the overstimulation aspect. I’m one of those people where I would prefer to read something at my own pace and ability to click context clue highlights on Wikipedia than have some snarkily annoying, clean-cut sea sponge named Brett in Buddy Holly glasses explain to me anything on youtube, only after spending 30 out of 35 minutes telling me to go subscribe to his gay ass channel. I don’t care Brett, I just wanted to see you take this filter off your vacuum so I could get back to Wikipedia-ing the world’s worst prisons (plot twist, Brazil doesn’t have shit on Russia). And what does Netflix do? Netflix fucking SCREAMS at you no matter what you click on. It’s like if “Where’s Waldo” was on PCP and really wanted you to find him before jumping off a roof. I don’t want to watch your trailers Netflix. I really don’t. It’s like Mugatu’s kill the prime minister of Malaysia’s training regiment in Zoolander except I’m just trying to get out of my comfort zone and maybe try a new movie. But don’t worry, I’m terrified and now I’m not going to. And also, somebody has just let themselves go as far as selections. Netflix got a bit too big for their britches and thinks that they can slap a Netflix stick on ANYTHING that moves and talks and sell it to us. Let’s not forget where we came from, OK? If AMC didn’t royally fuck up and drop the ball on Walking Dead and The Killing, you wouldn’t fucking be here with a streaming service. You started with discs, of other people’s good shit. Let’s not forget that. OH, AND SPEAKING OF THE KILLING…you know what else got killed off inappropriately?????? Mindhunter. I haven’t forgotten and one day I’m going to meet one of you fucking Netflix executives and ask you, as I throw my 7-11 burrito at you, why you find the need to produce like 17 buddy/rom-coms with John Cena in a fucking Christmas sweater? NOBODY IS WATCHING THAT. If you brought just one show back, fuck your budgeting constraints, I know your profitability would skyrocket because viewers would trust you again. 2/10
Britbox: My absolutely new favorite. All of the detective/mystery shows you could want. It’s like somebody fucking knows what they’re doing. I’m convinced Agatha Christie’s cryogenic floating head on a stick wheel is running the show here because the app works and the shows are really good and I’ve never seen any of them. Highly recommend. 10/10. No complaints.
I know that there are more of these to review, and I’m also not stupid, I’m aware I can torrent any of these, but sometimes I just would like to watch something without clicking out of 8 various re-directed porn websites to watch a movie. Is that alright with you Mr. Money Saving Money Bags? I’m sure in the not-so-distant-future, these products will be yet another pipe-dream to us, only available to the upper-crust folks of the world. But in the meantime, can we just get some of these things fucking fixed? What the hell are we paying you for?