The Rundown: The Case For Always Watching TV With The Captions Turned On

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

It is my position that everyone should watch television with the captions turned on, all the time, with a few limited exceptions. I’m not a zealot about it, though. I’m not going to make you do it. It’s your life and your television and you can do what you like. I only came around myself in the last four or five years. Part of it was because of this job, or at least the way I do this job, which often involves making screencaps with the dialogue on the bottom to be included for comedic and/or dramatic effect. Part of it was a result of watching Peaky Blinders, a show that is technically in English but is filled with soup-thick accents and mumble-mouthed Jewish bootleggers played by Tom Hardy, to the degree that the captions are necessary until you get your feet up on the board and ride the wave into shore.

So there’s the practical aspect of it. Once you get used to having them, once you can start to train your eyes to not be hopelessly distracted by them, it becomes super useful. Did something a character said get lost in the background noise Just glance down. Is your partner or child or parent or friend talking through a good scene about something they think is important enough that you can’t shout “WILL YOU SHUT UP AGENT DOUG IS TALKING” without upsetting them in a way that will prevent you from watching the rest of the episode in peace Just quickly glance down, read what Doug said, then continue to pretend to listen to whoever is talking. It’s a useful, utilitarian feature. It can save relationships. You should use it.

It can also, and this admittedly might be more of me thing than an anyone else thing, add a layer of comedy to almost any show. Remember how I said I started really using captions while I was watching Peaky Blinders Well, that’s when I stumbled across this.

It’s beautiful. I love it. And if I didn’t have captions turned on while watching Game of Thrones one time, I might have missed a horse galloping by in the fog with the caption “[NEIGHS HOARSELY]” underneath it (HOARSELY!), which, in hindsight, and I need to stress here that I am not joking, might be my all-time favorite moment from the show.

Or how about this shot from Billions, where Wags is making an evil little mischief face, as Wags will do. That would have been great on its own. Add in the “dramatic music” music cue and it takes it to a whole new level. Just perfect.

My favorite example of this will always be Mike Ehrmantraut on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Jonathan Banks plays the character as such a cranky collection of grunts and sighs and I really adore that all of them are documented like this. My favorite is how specific the captions get about it: some are listed as groans, some as sighs, some as grunts. I like to picture a contentious meeting where six people are at each other’s throats around a conference table as they try to settle on which is which in any given scene. I mentioned a fair amount of this in my Better Call Saul recap this week but I don’t care. I’m mentioning it again now because it remains true. Look at my grumpy king.

There are a few limited exceptions, as I alluded to above. I don’t like to watch fast/smart comedies or standup specials with the captions on, at least not the first time through. I find that sometimes I get too excited and read the punchline before it actually gets delivered. That’s not good. It ruins so many good jokes. This is no one’s fault but my own, I know that. But I also know myself well enough to know that I sometimes need to protect myself from my own impatience. Your mileage may vary. That’s okay.

Do give it a try if you haven’t, though. Give it a real, honest try, mostly for the practical reasons, but also for the fun. One last example, with the mildest of spoilers from this week’s episode of Better Call Saul. Mike was out in the middle of nowhere, in a small town he didn’t want to be in, and he was walking around with just a classic Mike stink face going. It was great. He was so miserable. Here, look:

But now look at that same shot with the captions turned on.

See Objectively funnier. Mike Ehrmantraut just shuffling around a dusty road like a grumpy lump, grunting and sighing and staring straight ahead out of his beady little intense eyes, with “[birds chirping]” right there underneath him on the screen. Don’t deny yourself that pleasure, people. You deserve it, especially this week.

Really, just an incredible performance out of Cats, the CGI-laden feature film adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical that had critics around the world saying “Why” and “No, I’m being serious here, tell me why.” Let’s look at the highlights:

— Dominated the 2020 Razzie Awards, taking home six honors(), including: Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst Director, Worst On-Screen Duo, and Worst Supporting Actor (James Corden) and Actress (Rebel Wilson)

— Got roasted pretty thoroughly by a very high Seth Rogen, who rented and watched the film and had a number of very sensible points to make

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) March 18, 2020

— Trended worldwide for an entire day during a global pandemic due to an alleged secret cut of the film that included the cats’ CGI buttholes and was scrapped when wiser and galactically less fun heads stepped in to have them removed

I’m so proud of Cats. This is almost exactly what I pictured for it when I first saw the trailer all those months ago, give or take a terrifying supervirus or two. It’s also, kind of, exactly what we all need right now. We can unite around this, just get lost inside the chaotic energy of the baffling experiment. I almost think we should all set a time and watch it together in the next week. Like, everyone acquires the movie, settles in, drinks a glass or two of wine if they like wine, smokes a little weed if they like to smoke weed, or comes in clear-headed to make it a fair fight if they’re brave, and then hits play at the exact same moment. It could be like a quarantined version of Rocky Horror Picture Show on social media.

I’m getting more serious about this as I type it out. We all need this, a two-hour breather from the apocalypse and a Twitter feed full of jokes about CGI buttholes. We must let Cats heal us.

My opinion on the “Imagine” video is as follows: Things are weird out there and they tried. It didn’t quite connect the way anyone involved hoped for, in part, I think, because too many people are home and bored and have the kind of free time required to take a blowtorch to a collection of celebrities very earnestly singing a John Lennon song. I don’t know, maybe a different song would have helped, like “Ooh Child” or some other uplifting number or maybe “Triumph” by Wu-Tang Clan, with verses traded off by like Tom Holland and Kristen Wiig. Hmm, no. That definitely would have been worse. Funnier, sure, by a lot, but very much worse.

There were some good messages from quarantined celebrities this week, though. Let’s run through some of my favorites. We had Matthew McConaughey giving what feels like a halftime speech to a team that’s down 20, complete with the full McConaughey experience and hand gestures, from little flutters to connected fingers to show unity. Very solid.

— Matthew McConaughey (@McConaughey) March 17, 2020

Next up, Arnold Schwarzenegger smoking a cigar in his hot tub while wearing sunglasses and a hat that says “SHERIFF” and yelling at defiant spring break teens. I love this video very much. Even more than the one he posted earlier in the week that featured a surprise appearance by his mini-horses. This is the highest praise I know how to give.

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) March 18, 2020

And finally, here is Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins holding his cat Niblo. That’s all. He’s just holding the cat and talking to the camera. It’s somehow more effective than both the star-studded “Imagine” video and the movie Cats. Really impressive work.