Nostalgia meets Futuristic Sci-Fi on Netflix with The Last Blockbuster & The One
One of these you should watch and the other you should run away from.
Netflix captured my attention this week with two noteworthy programs: The Last Blockbuster and The One.
It was coincidental that I came across The Last Blockbuster on Netflix this week because I had just been involved in a LinkedIn discussion related to the demise of Blockbuster and it brought back for many of us responding on the thread all the shmaltzy “feels” of what the in-store experience of a Blockbuster Video was like. Some of us commented on the smell of the stores, the weight of the box, how it brought us together in search of that one perfect movie, and of course the pain factor with the late fees and “Be Kind Rewind” messages. Blockbuster was a bastion of my youth, a haven for film geeks, people that were different, and it was a place that I could feel less weird than I usually felt. I also could peruse without judgement. Which is why the first hour of The Last Blockbuster felt like I had reclaimed that time and place in my life.
What’s also really cool about this documentary apart from learning about the last Blockbuster in the world, which is managed by Sandi Harding out of Bend, Oregon, is learning about all the actors that worked there at some point in their lives. Not surprisingly, they are also a little geeky (Samm Levine of Freaks and Geeks, Adam Brody of The OC, Paul Scheer of The League) but it also had the effect of appreciating that at some point these guys weren’t celebrities, they were normal people pulling pranks, like being the hand that reaches into the drop off box to scare customers, and just being young and goofy.
The other interesting part of the documentary is the business history of Blockbuster and how it ultimately ended up filing for bankruptcy and was sold to Dish in 2010 for $320 Million. In its heyday as Blockbuster was gobbling up the mom and pop video rental stores and opening up stores every 17 hours, the store seems infallible and its management on top of its game. Viacom bought Blockbuster in 1994 for $8 Billion but that purchase also was the beginning of the end in some ways for Blockbuster.
Sumner Redstone, Viacom’s CEO had eyes on Paramount and borrowed heavily against Blockbuster for that acquisition, saddling the company in debt. Why is this debt important? As Netflix enters the equation and competes with Blockbuster in the mid-00s, both companies are at relative, neck and neck competition (DVDs by mail). Sure, Blockbuster does that “no late fee” campaign which resulted in a loss of $250 Million overnight for the company but it wasn’t until 2008 and the Great Recession that all those decisions caught up with the company. The difference between having that debt and not having it in the case of Netflix allowed Netflix to focus its dollars on growing a subscriber base.
For years, you likely heard the story that Blockbuster didn’t see the future coming and Netflix did, but it wasn’t quite like that. Although Blockbuster did have a chance to buy Netflix around 2000 at a reasonable price but turned it down, for Blockbuster it was a string of poor management decisions, that just being one of them.
But these elements I’ve laid out here are really half the story to this documentary. The rest centers around the last few franchise owners (in Alaska) and especially the Bend, Oregon store, where time seemingly stands still and community and family still mean a great deal, where The Last Blockbuster does its best work.
As Sandi Harding, General Manager of the Bend, Oregon story says almost on repeat, ‘I’ve employed every teenager from Bend, Oregon at one point or another.” She’s proud of this fact. It’s up to you to figure out if you feel more sympathy or admiration for Sandi’s work - keeping the lights on for so long, for Blockbuster Video.
Survey Says: Watch it
The One holds promise. It falls in the rising sci-fi genre of DNA matchmaking service which promises you the ability to find your perfect mate (AMC’s Soulmate took verbatim the same theme and was released in 2020) to essentially bear witness to how people and society adapt to this shift, especially established happy couples, who now entertain a whole lot of doubt and seemingly look for cracks in their relationship because their curiosity gets the better of them. That aspect feels real.
What feels off about The One and where my interest waned was the focus on the backstory of how the business, MatchDNA was created (Spoiler Alert: There’s a murder) and the moral shame spiral that unfolds based on the actions of the show’s main character, the CEO. Is she ruthless? Is she just trying to make the world a better place by taking the work out of finding your perfect match and all the time wasted on frogs? Maybe…Do I care? No, not really…Should you care? Probably not.
My advice is if you want to see a show that follows a similar idea, but where the focus is on the couples brought together or apart by science, check out Soulmates on AMC. Each episode is its own vignette and the first few episodes, especially, are excellent. The show features partners at different stages of relationships, same-sex couples, hetero couples, and ultimately all dealing with universal truths of finding love even when the “work” is taken out of the equation by the promise of science.
Fun Fact: Brett Goldstein, a British comedian, who is memorable in Ted Lasso, is the program creator of Soulmates, which just speaks to the dimensions of his talent.
Survey Says: Don’t bother with The One, but watch Soulmates.