Television changes with every year, every presidency and every major world event. Looking back at the ’80s and ’90s, the landscape of television was entirely different; we couldn’t simply tune in any time online. Waiting for one’s favorite television show was a ritual in itself. Even the content behind shows’ stories have changed with the times: no longer are sitcom characters prohibited in their actions or decisions by the lack of a cell phone or Google.
In the classic Seinfeld episode “The Chinese Restaurant,” George Costanza waits at the aforementioned Chinese restaurant for a call from his date. The majority of the episode centers around George having to use the restaurant’s phone, which people keep taking before he can get to it. In a modern day Seinfeld episode, George would most likely have a cell phone and his date would just call him from there. This plot couldn’t exist today because the episode’s central problem could be immediately solved.
Shows such as Master of None, Love, and You’re The Worst have all used their characters’ smartphones as a major plot device. In Master of None, half an episode is dedicated to Dev (Aziz Ansari) waiting on a text from a woman he wants to take on a date as his friends give advice about what he should do if she bails. In Love, multiple episodes use smartphones to further the story. In one episode, Gus (Paul Rust) sends a risky text to his love interest Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) and waits all day for her to respond – like “The Chinese Restaurant,” but with no limitation of place.
Just as Seinfeld‘s lack of smartphones has rendered some of the humor dated, the usage of smartphones in the plotlines of Master Of None and Love makes the future watchability of these shows questionable. Will their dependence on modern-day conversations and technologies outdate them?
Seinfeld is still a great show, but we now might see some of its situations and conflicts as silly because we in the modern age can deal with them with a simple Google search.
Will tomorrow’s audiences also find our current shows silly because they know they can solve their conflicts with some unknown future technology?
In the meantime, all we have to worry about is when we’re gonna find the time to binge-watch all those episodes sitting in our DVR.