Five Questions You Should Never Have To Yell At Your TV

Plus: 'In The Heights' and Your Favorite 'Friends' Revealed! [View this email online]( [Pop Culture Happy Hour]( by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week [when Stephen Colbert]( became the latest person to reunite with some of his favorite folks. It was the week when we [remembered Ned Beatty]( who graced everything from Network to Superman. And it was the week when [the most unlikely reboot of the year]( just would not slow down. Opening Argument: Five Questions You Should Never Have To Yell At Your TV The more I've been at home this year, the more I've had the opportunity, for good or for ill, to sample a great many streaming services. And I'm hardly the first to note that they need a lot of improvement when it comes to the ways they present content. Let's talk about five ways that every streaming service could be better by not turning me into some kind of 21st-century Andy Rooney, yelling at my remote. 1. Where's the thing I was just watching? Most services are good about the "continue watching" or the "resume watching" function. But occasionally, they hide it below a row or two of other content. It should be first. Not just because it's usually the thing I'm looking for, but because every streaming service, streaming device, internet appliance, or thing that you plug in will crash at some point and have to be restarted. If your service blows up and I finally get it reloaded and I gotta look all over the page to find the thing I was just watching? We're going to have words. 2. Where's the thing everyone is talking about? Algorithms -- I know. Algorithms matter. But it happens to me distressingly frequently that there's a show that's the absolute hot property, and somehow as I'm paging through the billboard at the top (the often rotating set of giant promo images), they don't even offer it to me. I am not so old that I don't want to watch the new thing! The fact that I just binged four seasons of The Great Food Truck Race doesn't mean I don't want to be cool! (I mean, it does, but they don't know that for sure. If you're promoting the heck out of something, I don't want to show up on your main page and not see it. 3. Why is this yelling at me? Not everyone agrees with me, and obviously Netflix has put all its money on the opposite proposition, but I do not like auto-play. I especially don't like it on main pages like home pages. Aha! Yes, I know! Netflix has made it possible for you to dig into your settings (they're several clicks away, which they should not be) and turn off autoplay previews. But the default should not be "we're going to start noisily showing stuff to you that you didn't ask for." Moreover, sometimes different apps wind up playing at different volumes. And just like I don't want websites to auto-play noise because sometimes it startles me, I don't want to suddenly be jolted, Lloyd-Dobler-style, by a loud thing that I wasn't expecting. 4. What are all of these rows? I have no idea why Netflix offers seemingly a million variations on a row called "Here's A Thing Other People Like." Trending Now? Popular On Netflix? Top 10 In The U.S. Today? Those are all telling me basically the same thing: Here's A Thing Other People Like. I don't need all these rows! A few rows! And then browsing by genre! Is that too much to ask? Furthermore, a "Because You Watched Halston" row, weeks after I watched Halston (which I didn't like), seems like overkill. And your "TV Shows set in New York City" row that includes both Billy On The Street and The Punisher may simply be trying too hard. 5. How did I get over here? It's a natural result of on-screen menus that navigation can get complicated. And if you have something like a Magic Remote (trust me, it's a real thing) or an Apple TV remote with a touchpad where it should have buttons, then you may know the pain of sliding a pointer or a selection all around the screen trying to land on the very precise tiny thing you want. Some menu icons are too small. Some interfaces are built so it's too hard to see what's highlighted -- in other words, what you're going to fire up if you press "OK." Make it easier, guys. --------------------------------------------------------------- Newsletter continues after sponsor message --------------------------------------------------------------- We Recommend: A quick announcement: There's a new book coming out from NPR about creating podcasts! It's called NPR's Podcast Startup Guide, and it was written by our own Glen Weldon. There's an upcoming virtual book launch event on June 29 where Glen will talk to PCHH producer Jessica Reedy and Code Switch co-host and PCHH pal Gene Demby about podcasting and the book. [Find more details here]( PCHH contributor Monica Castillo, who contributed her enthusiasm [to last week's show]( about In The Heights, [wrote thoughtfully this week for NPR]( about the discussions of colorism that began to haunt the film, as she puts it, from the minute the trailer came out. [This week's episode]( of John Moe's podcast Depresh Mode features Stephanie Wittels Wachs, whose brother, the comedy writer and actor Harris Wittels, died of an overdose in 2015. She and John have a sad commonality, because John's brother died by suicide after struggling with addiction for many years. It's not an easy episode, but hearing them talk about how they've coped with loss and how they coped with addiction as it invaded their families is really instructive and moving. I don't know if Wasabi, the Pekingese winner of this year's Westminster dog show, is technically a dog, because [as Vulture points out]( he looks more like a guinea pig. But his magnificence cannot be denied, and he is to be congratulated for his victory over many more dog-like dogs. A few new shows to try if you want to be ready for next week's podcast episodes: We're going to be covering [We Are Lady Parts]( on Peacock as well as [Physical]( on Apple TV+, and you can never go wrong brushing up on the Fast and Furious franchise as we approach F9, perhaps the first blockbuster named after a button on a computer keyboard that a lot of the time doesn't seem like it does anything. I've talked a couple of times this season about how interesting the fourth season of [The Handmaid's Tale]( has been to me, as a person who really liked the first season but quickly grew [tired of the show's repetitive cycle]( of June nearly escaping Gilead and then winding up back where she started. With all ten episodes of the season out now, it's safe to say that the show successfully broke out of its rut (for me) and became about something else entirely, which is the aftereffects of trauma. If you were waiting for it to become less bleak, that's ... probably not the reason to pick it back up? But boy, they've done a lot of work to create forward progress. What We Did This Week: [The cast of Friends.]( Warner Bros. Television/Getty Images On Monday's show, Glen and Audie Cornish [talked about Netflix's Sweet Tooth](. Tuesday was a day for good tunes, as Stephen and NPR Music's Marissa Lorusso [offered three summer road trip songs](. We asked and you delivered: we received thousands of votes in our poll to rank the friends of Friends from best to worst, and [we announced the results]( on Wednesday's show, featuring Sam Sanders, Barrie Hardymon and Bedatri D. Choudhury. As if that weren't enough, who can forget the supporting friends, the auxiliary friends, the next-tier friends? The lovers and families and so forth? We asked you to vote for your three favorite side characters, and on Thursday, [we also revealed that top ten]( On Friday, Aisha and Glen [were joined by our friends Kathy Tu and Tobin Low]( to discuss the latest Disney/Pixar movie, Luca. What's Making Us Happy: Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: - What's making Tobin happy: [Hola Papi by John Paul Brammer]( - What's making Kathy happy: [This Is Us, on NBC]( - What's making Glen happy: [Remembering Ned Beatty]( and his scene on M*A*S*H - What's making Aisha happy: [The Insecure Spotify playlist]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. --------------------------------------------------------------- What do you think of today's email? 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