I miss being obsessed with a TV show. Not “Oh, I watched a few episodes while folding laundry” obsessed. I mean obsessed. Lost. Breaking Bad. The Walking Dead.

The kind of obsessed where an episode ended and you immediately needed to discuss it with another human being, preferably someone who had also watched it and therefore understood that your current emotional state was completely justified.

They just don’t seem to make them like they used to. Or maybe we don’t watch them like we used to.

I am, admittedly, a huge fan of releasing an entire season at once. Give me a weekend, a blanket and a streaming service and I will happily destroy six episodes of Slow Horses while occasionally wondering what day it is. But there was something magical about having to wait.

Every week, an episode dropped. And suddenly Tuesday night or Sunday night, or whatever night your show aired, was an event. People sat down at the same time and watched the same thing. Then, the next day, everyone talked about it. At work. At bars. In elevators. With strangers who somehow became temporarily part of your television community.

I remember being at a miserable three-day work conference, because apparently professional development wasn’t already punishment enough, and a bunch of us somehow organized ourselves to watch the Lost finale together.

It was a moment.

For those few hours, nobody cared about the conference. We weren’t networking. We weren’t discussing strategic initiatives. We were collectively trying to understand what the hell had just happened on that island.

And maybe that’s what I miss most. The collective experience.

We have more television than we’ve ever had and somehow fewer television conversations. There are endless shows, endless platforms, endless episodes and yet it feels like there are fewer cultural moments. No single show everyone is watching. No water-cooler obsession. No universal “DID YOU SEE THAT?”

Maybe what we need as a country is another gigantic television show.

Something so compelling that for one hour a week, millions of people put down their phones, stop arguing about politics, stop doomscrolling, and watch the same fictional people make terrible decisions.

Although, maybe I should revise my theory.

Recently, I found myself having an actual bar conversation about Worst Ex Ever. And people were engaged. They had opinions. They wanted to talk about it. We were strangers united by the deeply human desire to collectively discuss someone else’s catastrophic relationship choices.

So maybe the fandom isn’t dead.

Maybe we’re just scattered.

Maybe we’re still desperate for stories that give us something to talk abouy. Something that creates a tiny little temporary tribe of people who watched the same thing and have to know what everyone else thought.

Because apparently what we need isn’t necessarily another Lost.

We just need something good enough that the next morning, someone looks at you and says

“Okay. We need to talk about last night.”

And honestly?

I miss that.