Day-to-Day: A Taste of the Loyal Viewer Discord
A preview of an additional perk for our upgraded membership tier
When we moved to Ghost, it gave me access to the ability to create additional membership tiers to Episodic Medium. Substack had allowed some version of this, allowing subscribers to become "Founding Members," but it wasn't a formal process, and I couldn't commit to offering additional value to those who graciously expanded their support of the newsletter.
When establishing the Loyal Viewer tier, which is $10 a month or $100 a year, I knew that needed to change, and it came in the form of the Loyal Viewer Discord. Now, there has long been discussion of a Discord as a way to foster more community among Episodic Medium's subscribers, and I hesitated because I didn't want to discourage the primary form of community: commenting on the reviews themselves. But it struck me as a good value-add to encourage people to upgrade their subscriptions, knowing that those who are likely to participate there would also likely keep commenting.
Myles McNutt
It's been nine months or so now, and the Discord is...a place where people chat sometimes! I don't want to overplay how active the Discord is, but there are roughly 90 Loyal Viewers, and if there's TV news or something you're watching, there's a good chance that posting there will spark a conversation. This includes many of our awesome contributors (past and present), and me, and while I don't know that it's a fully realized community it's definitely the kind of space that I think subscribers to this newsletter would enjoy. (This is the point in the newsletter where I'll note that if you are a Loyal Viewer and don't have access, email me and we'll rectify that).
But I've been wanting to provide some additional value, which comes with some reservations involved when defining the value of a subscription. When Episodic Medium started as a project just for myself, the question of value was a question of self-worth: was my writing worth $5 a month? I honestly probably would have set that number lower if Substack had allowed me to (I said as much in my introduction), but it created the foundation for us to add additional contributors, growing our subscriber base into the sustainable media criticism project you're reading right now.
Myles McNutt
There's a problem here, though, as the expansion of Episodic Medium created a different question of value: are people able or willing to pay what our writing is worth? We haven't raised our subscription rate since those early days, despite having gone from reviewing two or three shows at a time to—at different intervals—closer to 9 or 10. In April of this year, we published reviews of 43 episodes of television, meaning that each review cost our yearly subscribers roughly $0.10. I don't think it's controversial for me to say that our reviews are worth more than $5 a month, and the fastest way for us to increase revenue would be to increase that base rate.
I don't want to do that. I've resisted it because I want our reviews to remain accessible, and because I know that not everyone is watching everything we cover in ways that would make the "value" highly variable. But it also means that opportunities like the Loyal Viewer tier are how maintain this level of coverage in a sustainable fashion, which also means that at least some of my effort needs to go toward adding value to that tier even if it comes at the expense of our Regular Viewer subscribers.
This is partially why I haven't been as consistent about "What Else Are You Watching" discussion posts (although that was mainly my actual job becoming all-consuming), because for better or worse I need to gatekeep elements of the Discord community in order to articulate its value. It is in this spirit—and echoing my original question of the value of my own writing—that I'm reluctantly adding an additional exclusive value to the Loyal Viewer Discord: Myles Watch, a daily-ish collection of thoughts on everything I watch in a given day. Sometimes it's capsule reviews of new episodes, sometimes it's a movie I threw on while working, and other times it's a show I'm catching up on. But the idea is a sort of Personal Letterboxd of what's behind the newsletter.
In the spirit of our paywall policies, I'm sending everyone a sample of what the first week of Myles Watch looked like. If this is something you'd like more consistent access to, along with additional outlets for connecting with others about TV, you can upgrade to the Loyal Viewer Discord at any time. In addition, as a special limited-time offer, I'm echoing our Anniversary Sale: your first year at the Loyal Viewer tier is just $88, instead of $100. You can access this by clicking the button below—if you're already on a yearly subscription, it will pro-rate.
As always, I don't want to seem entitled to your support. What I've learned in running this newsletter is that you have to be confident in the value of what you're offering. Every time someone cancels renewal, I remind myself that value is subjective, based on the circumstances a person is in and the perspective they have. We're never going to please everyone, and while there's no perfect version of this newsletter, the version that exists is the best we can offer with the resources we have. That people are willing to support it remains an immense privilege, and if people are willing to extend that support, I hope this additional offering helps justify that.
Monday June 1
Interview with the Vampire (S1 E6-7, S2 E1-2): I know Rolin Jones a bit from his past TV work—I actually interviewed him for a term paper I wrote in grad school on Weeds—but it's interesting to see how playwright-forward his work is here. There's obviously an epic scale to the beginnings and endings of seasons, but it's also often VERY contained. While there are "cinematic" moments, the show's excess is more often "theatrical" in nature, double-underlined by the introduction of the Theatre de Vampires. We probably won't finish S2 tonight, but we'll be caught up in time to watch some screeners before Sunday. (For the record: I had watched the pilot when it first aired. Nothing else.)
Pop Culture Jeopardy (Semifinal 1): The judges' decision on whether to accept Annie Liebowitz as opposed to Annie Liebovitz didn't end up impacting the final result, but it was still stupid and they should feel bad about it. This was otherwise actually one of the least maddening boards in terms of categories being wildly illogical.
Backrooms (Dolby Cinema): It's so interesting to see the parts of this film that are clearly a studio executive's anxiety over it not being enough of a "real movie." Parsons knows how to make a found footage sequence, and the production design carries so much of the weight, but there still needs to be a divorced guy, y'know? The worldbuilding IS the movie, and they seemed to be aware enough of that to avoid overburdening things and letting vibes win the day.
Tuesday June 2
Full Swing: I don't remember what season this is, but golf is a sport I don't follow regularly at all (minus an occasional check-in on a major score on a Sunday) so it's interesting to get a narrative-ized view compared to sports I follow more regularly (the brief-lived tennis version of this format was useless to me). The Ryder Cup seasons have a clearer climax, but it also meant a cameo from You Know Who, and that was unpleasant.
Bros: This was newly added to Netflix during pride month, and I don't know if I ever revisited it after theaters? Anyway, not going to lie, it's a tough watch in a post-Fire Island universe where there's a version of a gay rom-com that isn't constantly calling attention to the fact it's a gay version of a rom-com. It feels mean, but committing to the third act relationship collapse based on Eichner doubling down on his public persona is just unpleasant? I had a work thing come up and didn't finish, but was kind of getting burnt out on the movie anyway.
Pop Culture Jeopardy (Semifinal 2): A truly thrilling conclusion, but also a deflating one given the need for strong teams to fight back our villains. I also couldn't help but feel like it was a bad clue that got us there, which needed an additional piece of clarifying information (year/decade would have worked, to be honest) to feel like a fair trivia question to me. There was also a clue about Tia and Tamera Mowry that's gonna end up in my newsletter about the show's conception of pop culture knowledge.
Interview with the Vampire (S2E3): It's interesting to see the show grappling with how to keep Lestat afloat in the narrative as we prepare for a season built around him. That was always going to the challenge based on the structure of the story, but the Armand focus of the early part of this episode did its job keeping his spirit alive.
Wednesday June 3
Pop Culture Jeopardy (Semifinal 3): Probably the most actively competitive round of the semi-finals in terms of all three teams being in it at different points, which makes sense given this was the 3 seed against the middle-ranked teams. Was kind of hoping for a stronger redemption arc for one team, but a solid final clue separated the winners. Rooting for them to take down the villains in the final.
Interview with the Vampire (S2 E4-5): I didn't end up making it to yesterday's press conference for Vampire Lestat, but that's probably for the best for spoiler reasons (not that I don't know some of the contours of where this is heading). There's sort of a fireworks factory (non-derogatory) quality to the season, but the flashback to 1973 was a productive way to "waste" some time and dig a bit deeper into some core relationships and work the past and present timelines together. Excited to get caught up for Sunday.
Thursday June 4
Pop Culture Jeopardy (Final 1): Kind of weird talking about it when I've seen Final 2, but definitely a deflating start. I will say that the first clue of Double Jeopardy (a miss by AMC B-Listers) was a great reminder of how hunting for Daily Doubles breaks how the categories are meant to work, since they clearly didn't realize they needed an entire song to fit in the missing space. Start at 400! Work the category! Not a crackpot!
Not Suitable for Work (Pilot): So this was...fine. I think my main observation was that doing a 40-minute premiere may be a privilege of the streaming age, but I wanted a clearer idea of what the show was after 20, when it seemed like an episode was ending. It felt like a long way to get to where the show wanted to be, with jokes that landed better than any characters really connected. Might put on another episode today to see how we feel.
Friday June 5
Pop Culture Jeopardy (Finals Part 2): Safe to say that there wasn’t a moment last season when I had to get up off the couch to pace during a daily double. The most thrilling of possible finales, which is why I wasn’t even that mad by the WAY TOO EASY final Jeopardy that didn’t feel befitting the final…but I got the result I wanted (and a video game category), so who am I to complain? Great stuff.
RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars (Season 11, Episode 6): So this whole format is fundamentally broken (on purpose), and it was designed to create situations like this one: where the decision is in the hands of queens with no chance of winning who have to decide what to do with their points. The result here was…messy, in a way that doesn’t track. Crystal and Aura both have zero reason to trust Silky in this scenario, and there’s no reciprocal logic in a context where decisions are locked in place. The mess that happened afterward (which got us to watch Untucked for the first time this season) was understandable, frankly, and given that Seleena probably deserved the top two last week anyway…rough stuff.
Four Rooms (1995): My boyfriend has been putting on random episodes of Tales from the Crypt on Shudder and one includes young Tim Roth and he was like “Oh, it’s like Four Rooms” and so we watched Four Rooms. A very weird energy from Roth compared to the roles I most commonly associate him with, but it was neat to see Robert Rodriguez doing a proto-Spy Kids.
Not Suitable for Work (Season 1, Episodes 2 & 3): Hmmm. So, it’s not terrible, but it feels very thin on the ground, and the choice to create so many “silos” for the characters has its benefits (Ego!) and also makes the whole thing feel too spread out. The “this season on” preview had…every story you could have predicted based on the premise, and that doesn’t create a huge amount of momentum for me. Watchable but wildly inessential, not sure what urgency I’ll have to get to the rest when they drop.
Interview with the Vampire (S2, E6-8): And we’re caught up. Good show is good! I do think it’s interesting, knowing the broad strokes of the narrative, to see how the show fills in the gaps in extending the story. A lot of it is about keeping Lestat in the story, but it’s also about acknowledging the inevitable tragedy (we see the news clippings, we hear the elegiac tone of the interviews, etc.) and forcing us to live in that with the characters. Was a touch ahead of the show on its “twist,” but it played well. Things felt a bit rushed into the epilogue, but I suppose that was inevitable. Onto Lestat!
Weekend - June 6 and June 7
Love Island USA (3? 4? episodes): I sampled a bit of the first U.S. season when it was on CBS, but I haven't gone back to it since it seemed to capture the zeitgeist more in previous seasons (there was even a Pop Culture Jeopardy question about it), and it's...fine. I think that ultimately I don't want to see people make out this much, but it's fine as background.
From (S4E7 and then a few episodes from Season 2): our From Sunday ritual usually involves a few more episodes as we dig into the mythology. The simple truth is that not a lot HAPPENS in an individual episode of the show, but it does a good job of keeping balls in the air, and there's a contained quality to the show's mythology that's got me thinking a lot about how they want to try to close this thing out next season.
Pillion (HBO Max): The film definitely coasts a bit (non-derogatory) on the casual way the show treats BDSM, watching our protagonist stumble into it without much hesitation and never treating it as sensational. Watching that crumble a bit is the narrative thrust of the story, and it ends in a place that's a little more normative in its POV, but some strong performances carry the vibe well.
So there you have it. Again, I'm not pretending that this is groundbreaking stuff, but if you want a more running dialogue of what I'm watching, it's got a dedicated Discord channel. Thanks for your continued support.
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