You’re Watching TV Wrong
Warning: Spoilers for Yellowjackets Seasons 1-3.
From the moment I had enough fine motor skills to hold a hand of cards, I was learning how to play games. In fact, it may have started even earlier than that. I vaguely remember gripping onto a tool made of flimsy red plastic that would fan the cards out for me–but that’s besides the point.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved playing games. My childhood is freckled with memories of Enchanted Forest at the dinner table, Werewolves after school, Parcheesi on the living room carpet, and Cranium in my grandparents’ old house.
And then, of course, the games went digital. I obsessively played Professor Layton and Super Mario Bros on my light pink DS, riding the thrill that came from staying up past my bedtime just to get to the next level. I snuck in Minecraft sessions between classes in middle school, and my siblings and I played on our Wii for years until it finally kicked the bucket a few summers ago.
All of this goes to say: I love to play games. And recently, I’ve noticed that my love for games has transcended beyond the games that already exist. I’ve started to bring a competitive spirit into other areas: namely, watching television.
The technical term here is “gamification”, the “process of adding games or game-like elements to something (such as a task) so as to encourage participation” (thank you Merriam-Webster!). I’ve seen gamification come up a lot online as a life hack or a form of motivation: “Gamify your cleaning routine–make tidying up fun!” It’s also a classic tool of marketing: point-based loyalty programs, social media challenges, giveaways, and so on.
When it comes to the bizarre competitions I spin around TV shows, sometimes the games get heated, and sometimes they’re remarkably low-stakes. And hell, most of the time I’m not even trying to win. For me, this newfound tendency to gamify is all about one thing: fun.
Yellowjackets: Pour One Out for the Cannibal Lesbians
Yellowjackets is quite possibly my favorite show of all time–it’s an insane Lord of the Flies-esque story about a high school girls soccer team who gets stranded in the Canadian wilderness after their plane crashes on the way to a national competition. It’s a show packed with the best ‘isms’: survivalism, mysticism, cannibalism, lesbianism. Who could ask for more?
While feverishly binging seasons one and two alone in my studio apartment, I knew that I had to introduce this insane show to all of my friends. But I couldn’t just make them sit down and watch it–it had to be more fun than that!
In came the drinking game. My friends graciously donated a large pad of paper upon which I scribbled the rules of the game, including gems like:
Drink every time Travis is brooding and annoying
Drink every time Adult Taissa is an awful wife and/or mother
Drink every time there’s homoerotic tension between Jackie and Shauna
We raced through the episodes. Glasses of wine were refilled, new beer bottles popped open with satisfying cracks, gin and tonics (90% pink gin, 10% tonic, a squeeze of lime) were mixed again and again. Eventually we finished season one, and then it was right on to season two and a new set of rules. This time, my friends chipped in, throwing out their own ideas. By the end of the second season, we had laughed, gasped at plot twists, speculated about plot developments, debated over rules, and had a few too many hangovers.
When the third season rolled out in 2025, I had moved back to the US, leaving my Yellowjackets viewing party back in the Netherlands. With it I had also left much of my desire to drink, so I switched gears for season three: it was time for bingo!
Before the premiere of the first episode, I ripped a page out of a random notebook in my girlfriend’s apartment and quickly sketched out a grid. Together, we brainstormed predictions and placed them in squares. I held the bingo sheet attentively as we watched each episode, happily crossing out each accurate prediction as it occurred. Some predictions were more outlandish than the rest:
The teen Yellowjackets have another psychedelic mushroom party
Walter has a secret dark side that is revealed
Adult Shauna is being stalked by Adult Melissa
Misty (Teen or Adult) murders someone for no real reason
The teen Yellowjackets play soccer (the most unrealistic prediction of them all)
Did I get dumped mid-season and rip up the bingo sheet in a moment of frustration? Sure! Did I make a new and improved bingo sheet specifically for the season finale a few weeks later? Absolutely! In fact, by the day of the season finale, I managed to get some of my co-workers in on the game. During our lunch break, we gathered around a screen and watched the episode together, frantically crossing out boxes on our individual bingo cards.
Nobody ended up with bingo by the time the end credits began to roll–because, truly, there’s no way to predict what’s going to happen in that fever dream of a TV show. But while I cannot predict how the plot will develop, I know for a fact that I’ll continue to spin games around it with each new season that comes.
Big Brother: Points for the Drama
16 strangers in a house full of cameras live streaming 24/7, forming alliances and voting each other out one by one: that’s the premise of Big Brother. It’s like if you took Survivor but set it in a house on the CBS lot in Los Angeles, and replaced all of the intense challenges with games where you have to identify fake comic book heroes, swim through mystery goo, keep your finger on a button for hours, and so on. And at the end of it all, one person wins $750,000.
As of writing this, Season 27 is currently underway. But I began watching back in Season 16, and successfully looped some of my cousins into watching the show by Season 17. Before too long, watching Big Brother became a family summer tradition. From June to September, my siblings, cousins, and I would flock to my aunt’s basement every few days to watch the episodes captured on the DVR (we’ve since made the shift to streaming on Paramount+).
After years of watching the show like normal, I threw out the idea before Season 25 of creating a fantasy football-inspired game. After getting introduced to the players during the first episode, we each drafted teams. Then we drew up a list of things that our players could do to earn us points. This ranged from winning competitions like the Head of Household and the Power of Veto to random actions like crying in the diary room, stealing someone’s food, farting, screaming at someone, and getting into a showmance (show romance, duh).
Suddenly, we all became a lot more invested in the show. Competitors that weren’t necessarily playing the social game of Big Brother all that well managed to be ideal picks for our own fantasy game. We booed as our players got evicted, celebrated as alliances blew up (+1 point), and cheered when even the most cringeworthy couples shared an on-screen kiss (+1 point).
This year’s draft took things to a new level. We brainstormed in separate rooms and drew up our game plans. We rolled dice to establish the draft order. We played the iconic NBA draft sound before each pick. And one selection at a time we built our teams and got ready for the season ahead of us.
There’s no prize for the winner, nor a punishment for the loser. It’s enough of a reward to have such a fun activity that brings us together time and time again. That being said, I did win last year and I am hoping to start up a winning streak purely for the bragging rights. Maybe I’ll check back in two months from now and have news of a victory to share.
* * *
Long story short: I’m rapidly losing the ability to watch TV like a normal person. I feel my eyebrows perk up every time I watch a show and see someone crying in a bathroom (+1 point) or notice a pair of antlers hung ominously on a background wall (take a drink!).
But at the heart of all this isn’t just the fun of making up ridiculous rules–it’s the way that gamification allows me to turn something as mundane as watching TV into a shared, engaging experience. The fantasy drafts, the drinking rules, the bingo sheets–they become little worlds that my friends, family, and I get to explore together. To that end, the “game” isn’t really about whatever show we’re watching; it’s about finding a reason to gather, to laugh, and to compete just enough to make it interesting.