I still remember the first kill.
Dexter’s first kill, that is, during the Dexter series premiere.
Although I didn’t watch it until released on DVD, I eventually jumped on the bandwagon.
Unfortunately, the series didn’t go out the same way it came in.
But for the most part, the original Dexter was a hit with a unique premise.
In reality, serial killers do untold damage to not only their immediate victims, but the butterfly effect impacts countless family and friends.
Yet we sided with the murderous blood spatter analyst because he justified his killings by exclusively victimizing other killers.
But I think fans also saw parts of themselves in Dexter, as we all have “dark passengers” of some type.
Yet as most Dexter fans didn’t appreciate the ending, most gave the Showtime series another shot with the release of New Blood in 2021.
Unfortunately, the first victim in the reboot was Dexter himself.
And this time, the killer was woke culture.
Dexter’s new girlfriend, and police chief, is Latina (or maybe Native American) and his group of friends checks the racial boxes.
They included an environmental protest in the first episode, and they put a woman with prosthetic legs on the dancefloor at a local bar.
Moving down the woke checklist, one of Dexter’s friends is in a wheelchair, and the shop owner where Dexter works is a stereotypical homosexual male.
And we’re supposed to believe this is a realistic setting in Iron Lake, in upstate New York, which is a real place.
Here are the actual racial demographics for Hamilton County, where Iron Lake resides, by the way.
According to the 2020 Census of 5,107 registered residents:
White: 96.2%
Black: 1.1%
Native American: 0.3%
Asian: 0.8%
Native Hawaiin and Other Pacific Islander: 0.1%
Color me shocked. This is one of the whitest towns in the US.
The original eight seasons had a diverse cast as they also had a Latina police chief, but her purpose wasn’t to check a box.
With the story set in Miami, it made sense.
We also had a black detective and an Asian analyst with his mind in the gutter.
Diversity is great, but not when forced.
So I hit the thumbs-down button when the program’s purpose shifted from entertainment to identity politics.
Showtime only uses diversity as a weapon in the culture war, not to provide acting equality.
New Blood goes as far as to make the first aggressor against Dexter a wealthy and unlikeable white guy that wants to buy an AR-15 from Dexter’s shop which personified their vision of the evil white gun-owning conservative.
But when Dexter asked the shop owner if they could refuse to sell the rifle to the antagonist, the owner told Dexter they had to because of American rights.
That’s when I’d had enough.
I rarely turn off a show or movie in the middle of it.
But I did with New Blood.
I think the last time was the 2019 remake of Child’s Play. They should have left Chucky in the 1990s, where he belongs.
It’s not that I’m not willing to give New Blood a chance. I did.
But when it was obvious that Showtime didn’t set out to entertain me, there was no point in continuing.
It was just an expensive virtue signal for company executives.
To be fair, I was surprised to see the Rotten Tomatoes score this high.
Maybe the show gets better, I don’t know, and I won’t know.
They lost their chance, at least for me.
Maybe Dexter fans are so desperate to reconcile the poor ending of the original series that they’re willing to overlook the wokeness.
Either way, the seeds of woke culture sewn in recent years offer nothing but a rotten yield in other media.
Netflix Fail
Last week, many Californians celebrated 4/20 in countless dispensaries, parks, and homes.
But while citizens enjoyed legal edibles and munched the day away, Netlfix executives scrambled as their stock crashed.
As Q1 closed, the platform lost 200,000 subscribers, dipping shares by 25%.
But Netflix's leadership doesn’t seem to understand the problem. Or at least they won’t admit it yet.
Executives would love us to believe users are simply cutting their budgets due to the economy.
In addition, the streaming king blames password sharing for their profit loss and a heavy subscriber cut after blocking Russian users.
Sure, some might cancel their subscriptions to save money. And we know everyone shares passwords.
And yes, they lost many Russian users.
But I don’t think thats why Netflix lost more subscribers than they gained for the first time in a decade.
Home entertainment is probably low on the list of things to cut to save a buck.
Especially when most people don’t pay for cable these days.
People want something to watch.
To forgo their source of entertainment, even when prices rise, is an extreme measure.
As a Netflix customer, up until recently, I’ll tell you why I subscribed and ultimately why I canceled.
It’s because I have so few options that are woke free.
Over the years, Netflix offered pillar films and series that skyrocketed the platform to worldwide dominance.
Films like Birdbox, Extraction, and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs are all fantastic originals that conquered ratings without a traditional box office.
Running series like Black Mirror, Ozark, and Mindhunter undoubtedly attracted many long-time subscribers in anticipation of the following seasons.
I might consider re-subscribing if they bring back Mindhunter, by the way.
But I’m sure they would tie “white male aggression” with serial killers if they did.
Unfortunately, many true crime programs center around how the criminal justice system committed racial discrimination.
And they definitely have.
But what about the many times when old-fashioned police work paid off and gave a family closure or put someone away that deserved it?
At the top of their ivory tower, the Netflix leadership doesn’t understand their customers and forgets what people want.
We want true crime, not true woke.
We want original comedies, suspenseful thrillers, and jump-inducing horrors.
I took a couple of film and theater classes in college.
And I believe one of the instructors defined, or cited, that what determines quality theater is how well the medium allows the viewer to suspend reality. Or something like that.
For example, we know Transformers aren’t real. But the 3D imaging is so good that we’re willing to watch the movies because they look genuine.
When Netflix fills programs with identity politics, we can't suspend reality because the medium isn’t believable.
And we’re sick of it.
That’s why Netflix is tanking.
So here’s some advice for the CEO: create original content based on millennia-old storytelling techniques with talented actors.
That’s why we pay you, not so you can have a woke contest with HBO.
CNN+ Fail
Companies must evolve with technology to survive.
In the 2000s, every major business pushed to write apps to stay relevant after the advent of the smartphone.
When social media spread, brands created accounts and eventually hired people to manage them full-time.
But social media and company apps are free to use.
Well, free of monetary charge at least.
And most consumers can only reasonably afford so much when it comes to streaming.
We only had a couple of options with Netflix and Hulu for a long time.
But now we’re seeing more and more streaming options with Apple TV and Discovery+.
More options are great for end-users, and therefore providers must be more competitive to win our paid subscriptions.
Either original streamers must rise above, or they fizzle out.
But content determines that.
And for our money, it must be worth it.
Even if all streaming platforms created award-winning programs, everyday people like us aren’t going to shell out $10-$15 or more a month for 5-10 providers.
Especially when prices continue to rise.
But CNN+ might be the biggest flop in media history, next to Smell-O-Vision.
What happened?
For a long time, but in the last two years specifically, CNN lied to us and failed to report the news.
CNN doesn't offer a product worth paying for between the 2020 riots, January 6th, coverage of police incidents, elections, and the economy.
And what’s more, they don’t even give you standard CNN with CNN+.
Instead, they offer Anthony Bourdain, Don Lemon, and Jake Tapper shows.
Tapper might have a few good things to say here and there.
I enjoyed his book The Outpost, about the relentless Taliban attack on Army Combat Outpost Keating near the Afghan-Pakistani border in 2009.
But aside from that, CNN is just another source for virtue signals.
If standard CNN ratings are in the toilet, why did anyone at CNN think people would pay for it?
Well, according to their subscriber count following the March 29 launch, about 150,000 people did.
Yet this ten-year-old girl that does makeup tutorials on YouTube has 1.7 million subscribers.
But Greg, she’s been online for a long time. CNN didn’t get a chance.
Please.
CNN is an international conglomerate with millions of dollars, branded personalities, cutting-edge technology, and limitless resources.
This embarrassing failure comes after CNN leadership spent $300 million on the platform, and it lasted 32 days.
Here are a few things that lasted longer than CNN+, thanks to Townhall.com:
New Coke-79 days
Jeffrey Epstein in jail-35 days
The Flood-40 days
Jon Stewart Fail
Jon Stewart has done great things for veterans and first responders.
He went to bat for 9/11 victims and supported the troops with USO visits, among other things.
But that doesn’t excuse this racist anti-white rhetoric from his new show, The Problem on Apple TV.
After hosting The Daily Show for years, Jon Stewart is one of the most well-known names in the political-comedy world.
That’s why many Stewart fans were excited to see him coming back with a new show.
But things aren’t looking good for Stewart’s new project.
According to Samba TV, the premiere only reigned in 180,000 viewers.
What’s more, that number dropped to 40,000 by its fifth episode.
I’m sure many people had high expectations for The Problem because they thought Jon Stewart would be a voice of reason in this cultural insanity we live in.
But that’s not what we saw.
We got more white people claiming to fight racism with racism.
They invite a guest with conflicting views, but he’s on Zoom while the white grifters sit with Stewart and the live audience in the studio.
It’s just more leftist talking points disguising themselves as a conversation.
They don’t let the opposition speak, as they constantly cut him off, and they appeal to the audience for applause.
My guess is they wouldn’t dare invite someone like Ben Shapiro or Thomas Sowell, that’s prepared to debate the panel with facts.
But like Levar Burton said on Reading Rainbow: don’t take my word for it.
Top comments:
Stewart’s ‘problem’ is woke culture and blaming all whites for past racism.
But it just shows that woke culture is like a zombie bite.
Reasonable people can completely lose their principles and sense of self.
It’s a shame, and it appears Jon Stewart will learn that the hard way.
Future of Media
The chickens are coming home to roost.
But how do we account for HBO?
They have some of the most woke programs, yet they quadrupled their subscribers last year.
There’s a market for woke media, and I can’t deny that.
There’s also a market for human trafficking.
But I wonder how they count HBO subscribers.
For example, I got HBO with my phone plan, at least I used to.
Did that count?
Does HBO gain permanent subscribers every time a hotel opens?
But on the other hand, HBO was always a pillar in home entertainment.
To have an HBO subscription in the 1990s was a status symbol.
I knew they were doing well, but I didn’t know they were doing HBO well.
And I think we still consider HBO the go-to extra channel, especially with more streaming content and live sporting events.
But I think streaming executives will reconsider their plans after we continue to see wokeness reap rotten fruits.
It’s clear in the ratings, and it’s clear Trump was right.
For all I’ve said, there’s an easier way to put it:
Everything woke goes to s*@t. -President Donald J. Trump