You should have seen my face when I found out that I could not watch the new season of Yellowstone, a highly charged fictional television series that was last winter’s binge-watching addiction in my house.
Guess when I found out? At 9pm, the exact time the Carpenter and I had planned to meet on the sofa to tune in for the start of season five.
You have never seen disappointment like my face at 9pm on Sunday.
It was embarrassing too, because I realized that we were possibly the only people in the whole of the international Yellowstone fan base who didn’t get the memo that the show’s streaming service, Amazon Prime Video, wasn’t sharing the much-anticipated new season. Nope.
Despite buying a subscription to Amazon expressly for this show during our COVID-19 quarantine days, and enjoying four seasons of Yellowstone to date, the show’s season debut was now going to be shown exclusively on their other subscription channel, Paramount Network.
Paramount disappointment.
The Carpenter and I had settled into our respective comfy seats. I had my decaf tea and polar bear blanket draped over my legs, settling in for the big show. We reclined back and looked up to our flat screen, setting our remote to Amazon only to find out we couldn’t access the show.
Even though this news was printed clearly on the screen, we couldn’t comprehend it. We needed to buy another channel? Surely, this was a mistake.
The Carpenter flipped through screens, back and forth, making me motion sick trying to solve the great deception. How could this be?
How could they put a new season on a new channel when we’d already paid for the first four seasons?
And how could I blame this on Elon Musk, because I just want to, even though he has zero to do with this. I’m in Twitter withdrawal. Everything is his fault this month, right?
All these subscription services are a sign of the times, but it makes me want to embrace my inner-Beth (inside Yellowstone joke) and stir up one heck of a commotion.
It also made me want to click the Paramount “free trial” offer, but that would have been a paramount error on my part, because even if I set an alarm, I would forget to cancel my subscription within the allotted days.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t suggest it. I regretted it as fast as I spoke it aloud, though. I know better. We cannot keep spending money on little things when we have bigger things to accomplish. It all adds up. And the cycle is financially destructive. It’s addictive.
Music subscriptions so we don’t have to hear commercials. Books read to us so we don’t have to sit still. Meditation apps to calm us while we pay 19% interest on the credit cards. Namaste. And a bunch of curse words.
I don’t even care what happens on Yellowstone (I absolutely care). I will not pay for another channel, you hear me, Kevin Costner? (Please call me to discuss, Kevin Costner.)
Ugh. Paramount disappointment. Spoiler details are welcome.
