It's the End of the World...Again

My husband and I love a good TV series.

After we put the kids to bed, we set ourselves up on the couch to watch an episode or two—who am I kidding; I’m barely getting through forty-five minutes of anything before I’m nodding off—of whatever show we are currently devouring. With full-time work schedules and two very needy boys at home, this is our version of date night and the only one-on-one time we get. It’s important for us to make a conscious effort to do this almost every night.

But my husband is one of those people who doesn’t like to watch too many shows simultaneously.

I don’t know what he did before streaming services.

Typically, we watch three or four shows at a time; a sprinkling of fully released shows/seasons—like Vikings or Succession—and then one or two live/newly released shows—like all the new Star Wars series or anything Marvel releases. Once we finish a show, we are allowed to add another show into rotation. And he keeps track; he has a tracker that lists exactly what we’re watching down to the episode, marks off as we complete the series and a separate list of what he wants to watch next. If I haven’t mentioned it, my husband is an accounting, data nerd. You wouldn’t have guessed that, right?

Last week, we had an opening in our lineup and he suggested we start HBO’s The Last of Us. I was game; a guy I work with had been raving about it and giving me shit the week before because I hadn’t watched the premiere. Plus I’d seen great reviews, and I’ll pretty much give anything with science fiction, fantasy-leaning a whirl.

So with a mug of hot sleepy-time tea in hand—Dry January BLOWS—and snuggled beneath a blanket on my normal spot on the couch, we navigated our way to the HBO application and loaded up the show to start watching.

And about twenty-minutes later, this was the text exchange between my coworker and I.

Now before all you Gamers jump down my throat, let me say this: two episodes in and I’m HOOKED. The writing, the cast, the sets—all of it is incredible and a masterpiece of storytelling.

But.

It’s intense as hell!

I spent the majority of the second episode hiding beneath said blanket, waiting for certain “things” to be over—no spoilers! And if you’re someone like me—someone who doesn’t do “scary” movies and whose anxiety hovers around a 10 on a consistent basis—I wouldn’t suggest watching it directly before going to bed. Unless you want a night of crazy-ass dreams—if you’ve seen the show, you can imagine what my dreams were like. But I’m not sure which is scarier: the nasty zombie-like creatures killing every living thing in sight, or the thought provoking reality that what we were devouring as entertainment could be our future.

Which brings me back to my text: haven’t we had enough of these dystopian, apocalyptic, hopeless sagas that always lead to horrific, unimaginable death and the complete destruction of life as we know it? And why does it seem like one of these shows is always brewing?

The theme itself isn’t new; literature has been saturated by it for decades. Centuries, even! The 80’s had The Handmaid’s Tale—a dystopian infertile America, run by religious zealots who enslave fertile women to bear the children of those in power. The 40’s had 1984—George Orwell’s masterpiece and commentary on the authoritarian state, where “Big Brother” is always watching. H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895—depicting the complete degradation of humanity, where humans were born and eventually rounded up like cattle to feed another species. Hell, if you want the original “this is how the world will end” narrative, look no further than the Book of Revelation in the Bible—kudos to you if you can read and actually understand it.

Our society is obviously fascinated by “the end of days.” Which makes sense as life is pretty cylindrical; everything in life that has a beginning should also have an end, right? And because no one truly knows when that time will be or how it will happen, creative licenses are bound to be taken.

But with recent shows—like The Last of Us, The Handmaid’s Tale and Sweet Tooth— the “creative” is replaced by “based-on-reality” plausibility. And that’s what wreaks havoc on my anxiety and keeps me up at night. A very real, parasitic fungus that infects humans, controls their minds and turns them into blood-thirsty zombies: a very extreme but real possibility—explained in the first five minutes of The Last of Us. A worldwide pandemic called “The Sick”, that wipes out most of the world’s population, causing the collapse of modern society: part of the premise of Sweet Tooth and HELLO, we sort of just lived through a smaller version, minus the hybrid animal-children. An infertile America, run by religious zealots who restructure society by stripping away women’s autonomy: um…Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale sounds eerily familiar to the last few months in America.

None of these “creative licenses” are a far stretch from reality. And if you think they are, you’re not paying enough attention to the world around you. Yes, these television shows are made to entertain—the zombies are supposed to scare the crap out of you and make you jump out of your seat—but it’s important to watch AND learn. Learn to protect our environment—Global Warming is a major proponent to why the fungus in The Last of US flourishes and mutates—never allow your rights to be stripped of you—keeping fighting, my sisters—and hysteria over an illness breeds instability and chaos—which we know first hand.

Okay, maybe I’m the only one who sees it this way. I know I’m overly sensitive to worse case scenarios—when I was little, I was convinced a tornado was going to touch down in my neighborhood while I was sleeping, so I had an emergency bag packed and ready to go at all times—and living in these times, with our own global pandemic, doesn’t exactly help the situation. But the plausibility is starting to overshadow the entertainment and I don’t think my psyche can take much more. Naturally there’s a really easy solution to all of this. One that will keep my anxiety in check and help me get a good night’s rest.

Stop watching these shows.

Just pick something else to watch.

Like Gilmore Girls. Stars Hollow doesn’t have zombies or brain eating viruses to worry about.

I actually did just that with The Handmaid’s Tale. I’m two seasons behind and I can’t bring myself to catch up to the current season. Even though I REALLY want to see it through, I don’t think I can stomach it. Especially now.

The verdict is still out for The Last of Us. It’s too early to turn back and I shouldn’t let my anxiety dictate my decisions. And watching it could be a form of exposure therapy :shocking my system with the things that scare me the most, to help better cope with my anxiety. Yeah, totally the rational I’m using.

But can I still hide behind a blanket during most of it?