When a brand new episode of AMC’s Interview With the Vampire aired the Sunday earlier than final, a selected type of fuse was lit in on-line conversations across the present. The fifth installment of the second season, “Don’t Be Afraid, Simply Begin the Tape,” was an impeccably written and acted horror movie in miniature—the type of factor you watch together with your mouth hanging open, earlier than pointing at your TV and saying, “Are you seeing this, too?!?!”
But when hundreds took to social media to ask that very query, a lot of the commentary was underscored by confusion, even concern, that individuals have been, in truth, not seeing it, too—that they weren’t seeing Interview With the Vampire in any respect. For a present so good, many stated, it was legal that extra individuals weren’t watching and discussing it, and that extra critics weren’t masking it. “That is one of the best present on TV proper now,” New York Instances tradition reporter Kyle Buchanan wrote in one broadly shared tweet. “I really feel gaslit that you just’d all slightly discuss mid or dangerous exhibits slightly than watch the golden customary!”
Some followers had already observed the diminished important protection in comparison with the primary season, which was met with near-universal acclaim and earned the present and the performances of its lead actors, Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid, locations on many end-of-year best-of lists. If something, the present’s sophomore season had acquired a good increased share of glowing critiques, however the huge splashy occasion protection that different lauded exhibits usually obtain (and are receiving as we communicate) was absent from notable mainstream retailers.
Plugged-in followers had additionally observed a drop in viewership from the primary season, a minimum of in keeping with publicly obtainable metrics, and upfront of the June 9 episode, Slate revealed an article titled, “Interview With the Vampire Is the Greatest Present Nearly No one Is Watching,” which laid out the these numbers plainly. Phrase began to unfold—particularly on up-to-the-minute platforms like X but additionally fanning out to locations like Reddit, TikTok, and even my house base, Tumblr, which is way extra prone to host gifsets, shitposts, or graduate-seminar-level analyses of the present than discussions of terrestrial tv rankings.
AMC had introduced IWTV’s second season earlier than the primary even aired, however midway by way of the second there hadn’t been a peep a few third—and with a story brewing about “one of the best present no person’s watching,” particularly within the wake of an episode that so many have been raving over, fan anxiousness began to ratchet up about its destiny. On X specifically, that groundswell shortly began to deal with AMC’s advertising efforts—and followers’ accusations that the community wasn’t doing sufficient to advertise its personal present set off a firestorm that brewed for days. “The advertising decisions AMC is doing with Interview With the Vampire is self damaging,” one fan wrote. Or, in the phrases of one other: “So mad they obtained me googling who’s head of promoting at AMC.”
There might be an enormous vary of the reason why a present in 2024—this one or some other—doesn’t have the attain it deserves; infinite pixels have been spilled on streamer fatigue and fractured audiences prior to now few years. AMC, a darling of the prestige-TV-on-cable period, is in an particularly unusual place: Even when Interview’s first season was a success on its streaming service, AMC+, it was nonetheless held up for example of a troubled business in transition. Two years and two Hollywood strikes later, the scenario is much more sophisticated. Because the business restructures and adjustments who can watch what the place, a disconnect has emerged between what viewers like and what critics do. On the similar time, social media platforms—the loci of Twenty first-century phrase of mouth—proceed to implode, fracturing the dialog of an already dispersed viewers.
