Some interesting analysis of what we’re loosing with the death of video stores. In particular, we’re losing some of the same type of recommendations and serendipity we’re loosing with the rise of e-books and less use of libraries/librarians. In particular, loosing well-curated collections is a big issue as we replace them with streaming services which don’t seem to have the same curatorial business models.
I particularly enjoyed this quote:
A great video store’s library of films is like a little bubble outside the march of technology or economics, preserving the fringes, the forgotten, the noncommercial, or the straight-up weird. Championed by a store’s small army of film geeks, such movies get more traffic than they did in their first life in the theater, or any time since. Not everything that was on VHS made the transition to DVD, and not every movie on DVD is available to stream. The decision to leave a movie behind on the next technological leap is market-driven, which makes video stores the last safety net for things our corporate overlords discard.
Blake’s reveal that he’s bisexual was a nice bit of cultural touchstone to put into the episode.
The opening seemed like it was going to be an out of the ordinary episode that followed a day in the life of one of the secondary characters (Blake), but left off after the first few minutes. I almost wished it had followed on the way it started to provide some variety in this type of show. I remember there were West Wing episodes that did this, but I suppose that was a much more balanced ensemble while this series is a bit more lopsided in its character involvement.
