I’ve been running a Netflix Party for one of the Facebook groups for a while now. Like I’ve said, having these twice a week have been a great thing for me. They are helping me feel like I’m being social and doing a communal thing with others. It’s helping me keep a regular schedule and have things to look forward to. And I also have gotten to know the women from this Facebook group even better now that we have this mini-group and we are texting with each other for a few hours a week.
It’s pretty simple to run the group. The only thing that can be tough is to make sure we have enough movies to vote on for our Saturday movies. But I just take a little bit of time each week to do a search on Netflix for any new movies that might be available and then another member from the group checks to make sure they are also available in Canada (since we have a few Canadian members). Picking movies is easy once we have the list since we have learned how to do polls directly in our message group. And just like having these Netflix Party nights is adding a routine to my life, so is working on the movie list and selecting the next movie.
On Wednesdays, we watch a tv show. It started as movies on Wednesdays, but we quickly switched to working through a tv show as it seemed like a lot of people wanted to do that. We decided to watch “Schitt’s Creek” as our first tv show and we finished the first 5 seasons last week. The 6th and final season isn’t going to be on Netflix for another month or so, but we will be watching that season when it is available.
Since we finished a tv series (or as much of the series that we can watch now), we had to do a vote for a new show. So I spent a few days collecting nominations for shows that the group wanted to watch, we did our Canada check, and we put it up for a vote. And while there were a lot of shows that people seemed to be excited about, the clear winner was “The Good Place”.
I love “The Good Place”. It was a show that I watched every week while it was on tv. I thought it was one of the best shows that I’ve seen and it was written so beautifully. There are twists in the show and those twists made things even more amazing. Nothing in the show seemed to be done to get ratings or attention. Every episode was deliberate and thought out, and that’s why I think they ended after only 4 seasons. That was the story that the creator of the show wanted to tell and they didn’t add more just to make more episodes (and make more money). I respect that idea a lot and it just added to what I loved about the show.
I know the show pretty well and there won’t be any surprises for me, but that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy it less. I think knowing how the show ends will make me watch all the episodes in a new light. And there are members of the group who will be watching that have not seen the show and I’m so excited to see their reactions to things that shocked me.
This Netflix Party group has become a big part of my quarantined life. I know that even if the pandemic ended by some miracle tomorrow that we would still figure out how to watch movies or a tv show together. We might not do it as often as we do now, but I have a feeling that this routine will be a part of our lives for a while. And maybe one day in the future, we will find a way to all meet up somewhere and we can do a movie night together in person.
I never thought a virtual movie/tv viewing group would be so important to me. But I guess that’s one of the things that this pandemic is making us realize. We are seeing what we don’t miss from our old lives, what we miss a lot, and what new things can bring a lot of happiness and joy to our lives.
You Might Also Like
So Many Virtual Movie Nights (or Thank Goodness For Technology)
Enjoying Movie Nights (or Watching My Screeners)
Finding A Social Life Where I Can (or Virtual Parties and Distance Hangouts)
Another Netflix Night (or A Comedy Panel)
Netflix Luncheon (or Rebels and Rule Breakers)
Another “Gilmore Girls” Adventure (or Netflix FYSee)
