My Facebook feed recently exploded with snarky jokes; I was chatting with friends that I haven’t talked to in months, while Sarah and I were laughing so hard at Facebook that I worried we might wake the baby. What’s so funny? NBC’s live interpretation of “The Sound of Music”.
Good TV invokes lots of social media discussion too, but it’s different. After the “Breaking Bad” finale, Facebook exploded too, but it was mostly in the “Oh wow that was great” vein. Everyone loves a good train wreck, though, and NBC delivered in spades. Sadly, we missed out on the “Sharknado” phenomenon, but this is looking to be even bigger.
It’s amazing how social media can change the viewing experience. A few years ago we would have watched something this terrible and probably switched it off in disgust after a few minutes. Instead, we powered through just so we could snark with friends! My only fear is that NBC will see the social media engagement numbers and not the actual critiques, and they’ll ruin more beloved musicals next year!
My kids fairly regularly live-tweet shows like Grimm and Supernatural, and there are massive responses – and I think part of it is that the official sites have people engaged furiously while shows are playing, with responses that are often witty and clever and always spawn more discussion. That is the type of social engagement that I know means a ton to younger viewers (i.e. teens and 20-somethings).
In terms of The Sound of Music, I see it as what would have been called a ‘water cooler show’ a decade or more ago – something you discuss in classes or while getting coffee at work. And you’re right – NBC is probably only caring about numbers rather than content – but that is fairly typical. We only saw the ending … which was more than enough to make us glad we didn’t see the rest! 🙂 Oh, and Sarah was hilarious on Facebook about the show!