Thursday, March 14, 2013

The TGIF Club - something a little off topic, but I hope awesome.

Hello everyone! I recently had an idea strike me for a new online viewing club. There're tons of great movie watching clubs online, and one of the best things of watching TV shows as they air is to participate in the social media discussion of that week's episode.

The problem is that I don't have cable and don't see things until, at earliest, a week after they air. This does not make for a fun time.

What I do have is Netflix Instant Watch, and I love it. I wanted to get a group together to watch specific shows, so I came up with an idea. I created the TGIF Club. Here's the info I posted earlier this week:


TGIF is the name of an American family-friendly prime time television programming block on the ABC network. The name comes from the initials of the popular phrase "Thank God It's Friday". However, the stars of the lineup touted the acronym as meaning "Thank Goodness It's Funny." In its first two runs, it was often compared with its Thursday night counterpart Must See TV on NBC. From Wikipedia
I have a goal. I want to build a community around enjoying the best, funniest sitcoms Netflix Instant Watch has to offer on a weekly basis. Every Friday night, this community watches the same single episode from four classic sitcoms and then comes here to discuss the night and each episode.
That's it. To join in you just need to watch some of the best TV ever made and come here to tell us what you think!
There are two simple rules.
1. No jumping ahead! You watch one episode of each series each week. Can't wait to see how a very special two-part episode of Cheers plays out? Too bad. When these shows aired originally, the audience had to wait a week or more to get the next episode. In this (awesome) day and age of instant watch and blowing throw entire tv show seasons in a single weekend, we often miss the excitement of having to have patience for the next episode. This subreddit is built on the idea that this patience and anticipation is worth living with.
2. No spoiling! Given the very nature of what we're trying to do here, these shows may be well-known by many and are usually completed series. There's not much secrecy enshrouding these episodes and classic tv shows. Some big plot swings may be well known or big exciting/notorious episodes are upcoming ("How come he don't want me man?"), but don't blow it for people watching through the series for the first time.
That's it. The is just a big experiment, and I'm not sure yet how shows will be determined. I might pick the first four shows for the initial run through, but as shows wrap up, we'll need replacements. If we get a good community, I'd be happy to open nominations and put it to a vote.

We're trying to get a ton of members, and we're starting week one of watching our initial run of shows next Friday, 3/22. Head over to this link and subscribe to the subreddit. You may need to create an account on reddit, which you should! Do it!

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