I recently received a Twitter message (a Tweet, for you Savvier, Younger Communicators) from improv actor and teacher Kevin Mullaney, of Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre fame, who takes me to task for revealing what he considers too much information (TMI, to you SYCs) in my TV reviews for NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
"Please stop revealing spoilers on your Fresh Air reviews," he tweets. Just finished Dexter 4 and wished I didn't know the end." Continuing to Tweet 2, he adds, "You keep doing it over and over with every TV show you review. I can't listen to them anymore."
Because Kevin said please, and implored me directly, I will respond just as directly. My response, in essence, is two words...
So don't.
I'm not being flippant about this. I don't mean or want to alienate Kevin, or any other listener or reader, by what or how I review. But on this point, I want to be firm, and clear, and unwavering, and completely, defiantly unapologetic.
Spoiler Alerts, like milk, must have an expiration date. Otherwise, it's a Spoiled Alert -- meaning that you've waited far too long to enjoy the product without letting anyone else cry, or laugh, over the spilt milk.
The first time I addressed this issue at length here was last September, in 2010, when the same Dexter complaint came up. The full column, with its delightful reactions from supportive readers, can be read HERE.)
Now it'a almost a year later, and I've gotten another complaint, a year later, about someone who has "just finished Dexter 4." In two months, Showtime will present the season premiere of Dexter 6, which means yet another year has gone by.
Literally, another year. The fourth-season finale of Dexter, in which Michael C. Hall's titular character to came home to find his wife dead in the bathtub, the final victim of the Trinity Killer (oops, I did it again), was televised in December 2009.
The DVD set of that entire fourth season, which could be purchased or rented by those who don't subscribe to Showtime, was released in August 2010. In less than a week, it will be August 2011. A whole other season of Dexter has come and gone in the meantime -- yet I'm still upsetting people with my own year-old plot discussion?
Back in 2010, as part of that article you probably didn't click on, I wrote the following:
So how long, as a professional critic, am I supposed to wait before the pop-culture stragglers finally get around to the wanna-see stuff in their "To Do" piles? Do I have to wait until the slowest runner in the marathon crosses the finish line? And even then, what about Viewers: The Next Generation?
In the case of Dexter, I think -- and I assert, I argue, I insist -- that I'm completely within my rights, when a new season of a TV show begins, to discuss how the previous season ended. How else can it be placed into context? And if nine months isn't more than enough time to keep mum before "spoiling" something, then something's wrong. And not with me.
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Bambi's mother died for our sins.
Or, at least, to give us something memorable and worthwhile and emotionally evocative to discuss when talking about that animated 1942 Disney film. Every six years, as Disney sees it, is a whole new generation of consumers -- very young people who are seeing Bambi for the first time.
But most of them can't read before age 6, so it's relatively safe to make my Spoiler Alert point using a cartoon that, next year, will be 70 years old. And coincidentally, 70 years is the current age of one of the most famous secret-ending movies of all time, Citizen Kane.
Is it okay, after six full decades, to reveal the meaning of the word "Rosebud"? Or, after all this time, are we still sledding on thin ice?
My bottom line, once again, is this:
I place myself among the critics most responsible and respectful when it comes to not revealing secrets, punch lines, or pivotal plot lines when previewing a TV show. It's when I'm RE-viewing it, and discussing events that have long since become part of the show's canon, that I feel not only permitted, but obliged, to recount and analyze them. Otherwise, what's a critic for?
If you care enough about a work of art to keep its surprises secret from you before you get around to them, then the responsibility to avoid information about that work of art eventually becomes yours, not mine.
And sorry, Kevin Mullaney @ircmullaney , if I just inadvertently ruined Bambi for you...
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