Too Much Internet Speculation Is Ruining TV

Raise your hand if you’re watching Westworld. Great, thanks. Now, raise your hand if you spend as much time listening to podcasts and reading Reddit threads about the show as you do watching it. That’s what we thought. Aside from being HBO’s new wildly ambitious sci-fi program, Westworld has also become the Internet’s new favorite TV puzzle to solve, inspiring podcasts and comment threads galore.

But just because it’s the latest Internet obsession, that doesn’t mean it’s the first. Not by a long shot. And on this week’s episode of The Monitor podcast, the crew is out to trace the path of the most picked-apart, conspiracy-theory-besieged shows on TV—from Lost to True Detective to, yes, Westworld. And beyond that, we’d like to answer this question: Can too much Internet speculation ruin a TV show? (Short answer: Yes.)

That’s not all! We also have a mini-screed on why the book-to-film adaptations Inferno and Jack Reacher: Never Go Back are doing so poorly at the multiplex and some thoughts on our other current pop culture obsessions. Join us, won’t you? We’ve got writers and editors Peter Rubin, K.M. McFarland, and Angela Watercutter on the mic and they’re ready to prophesy.

A few helpful links for things we talk about in the podcast:

-Charley Locke’s piece on true crime podcasts

-Angela Watercutter’s essay on neo sincerity