The best part of old TV wasn’t always the show itself. It was what came after. The screen would move on to the credits, and you get the chance to see these moments between the cast where they’re having fun and laughing. Somebody forgot their line. Somebody dropped a prop. The whole thing would appear in the most real, human way. Those bloopers were like a secret handshake between the people on screen and the people watching at home. It was like we were invited to witness this beautiful bond between these cast mates.
It’s strange how something so small disappeared. Streaming changed the way we watch, and with it, we lost the details that made TV feel personal like bloopers and theme songs. Now the episode ends, and the streaming app will immediately count down to the next one. Credits are often skipped or disregarded (unless there’s a Marvel movie that everyone wants to see that ending scene in).
Everything is so fast moving and serious. The perfect TV, in my opinion, is kind of boring. It feels like everyone’s trying to be the smartest or have the best quotes and meaning which means there’s little to zero space left for the silly, fun and, most importantly, real stuff that made television feel alive.
Bloopers were the reminder that television was made by people just like us. You’d see an actor laugh until they couldn’t breathe or two co-stars break into an unscripted hug after a take went wrong. Those moments showed the warmth, the bond between the cast and the other staff, behind the work. It’s easy to forget that acting is hard. Repeating lines for hours under bright lights and trying to make every emotion look natural doesn’t just come to everyone naturally and without any mistakes. Bloopers showed that the emotions on set were real and not just performed for the sake of the show.
When you saw those clips, you saw a side of your favorite show you couldn’t get anywhere else. It made you like the cast more because you saw who they were when they weren’t pretending to be a character.
We talk a lot about wanting authenticity in TV, but realness doesn’t only live in heavy dramas or documentary-style storytelling. Sometimes it’s in the smaller, forgotten things like a bad take, a missed line and a shared laugh between costars.
Maybe it’s time to bring that back, and I don’t mean bring it back as some fancy special feature. I want it to be a part of the experience again. The mistakes are the part we remember anyway.
