Thou shalt not touch the Netflix queue

I had no idea it was such a big deal.

Well, that's actually a stupid thing to say because by all measures my husband is as late a technology adopter as they come. He just learned how to send e-mail two years ago - IM last year. So when he signed up for Netflix all by himself, then set up a queue of movies, I should have known better than to mess with it.

Netflix was his.

I was not authorized to touch it.

But I couldn't help myself. The queue was chock-full of action flics, horror movies and crime dramas and while I love the action stuff, I was getting a little tired of his choices. They seemed a little, I dunno, repetitive and pointless. But he wasn't really taking my input on this and we got into a rut where nothing in the little red envelope was interesting to me.

So I thought I'd spice things up a bit. No, not that way. If I'd spiced things up that way I wouldn't be in this predicament. He, like most men, would have been pleased as punch at such initiative.

I didn't.

Well, not really.

Ok, I kinda did. But not the right way.

I added Montenegro, which I had not seen since high school. I also added Lantana, Transamerica, Baraka, and Microcosmos. These are supposed to be good movies. And several of them he'd probably even enjoy but we may never see them because we are stuck on Montenegro. It arrived three months ago. He took one look at it, sighed and said, "what the hell did you do to my Netflix queue?" But I didn't send it back because I thought, hey, I want to see it, I'll wait until he's out of town and then I'll watch it by myself.

But I haven't done that.

And I haven't sent it back either.

And now nothing new is showing up at our house because Netflix won't send anything new until they get that one back. I suppose I could upgrade the account to get more movies at once, but that seems just as silly as holding on to a movie it seems obvious I will never watch.

Why am I holding on to it? Honestly, I don't know. It was one of the first graphically sexual movies I ever saw. Not porn but definitely sexual. And a little depraved, I might add. I left the movie theater a giant walking eyeball. I was very shocked by what I had seen (warning, spoiler ahead) because after running away from home to have an affair, the mother returns and kills her entire family. I mean this was not a bad family that had mistreated her. They were just really, really boring. So she hand-fed them poisoned grapes. (I'm sorry, I've completely ruined this movie for you, but since I can't imagine that Netflix has more than one copy of it in stock, and that one copy is safely tucked away in my bedroom, the chances of you actually seeing it are pretty small.)

I think I'm wondering how the movie will stand the test of time and my own personal experience. So I'm holding onto the damn thing, knowing that if I send it back I will certainly never put it in the queue again, knowing also that I have no real intention of watching it.

This is the kind of behavior that makes my husband insane. And really, who wouldn't be driven insane by it? As I read my own words I'm struck by some sense of witnessing the pathological.

That's it. Tomorrow I'm sending it back. And if I have an ounce of sense I'll put something awful like "Saw 2" at the top of the list to make amends.

No I won't.

But I could put something like Fishing with John at number one, and the Usual Suspects at number two. Maybe that will redeem me enough so that he will reclaim ownership of the Netflix queue and we can get back to watching movies again.

Comments

[Banana Split]

[this is good] You've intrigued me with your description of Montenegro. I'd add it to my own queue but you've got the only copy. :)I've got the same situation in reverse. Netflix is mine. When the boyfriend has a film request, I'll express my displeasure with a lot of heavy sighing and grumbling while I figure out where I could possibly fit it into the line-up.

[raf]

[this is good] Our queue is about 200+ movies with the wife always shuffling things to the top. I finally decided to create my own queue and allot it one movie of the three included in our subscription level. If you really want to see something coming from NetFlix that you want to see, you may want to do the same.

[Bookmole]

Getting between a Boy and His Toys can be dangerous. Beware snarliness.

[Shawn Smith]

:) My Wife modified "my" Netflix Queue only yesterday. We have the 3 movie program. So, I split off 1 of the movies for her to manage and left 2 for myself. This way, everyone can be happy and "we" don't need to change anything with my queue of movies. The ability to split the queue into 3 even might be interesting. 1 kids queue, 1 wife queue and 1 MAN queue!

[Essy]

At least you don't pay late fees for keeping it so long. My husband does the same thing at Blockbuster. He rents a movie, and then holds on to it because he hasn't watched it yet. In the meantime, the late fees are accumulating until it would have been cheaper to buy the darn thing in the first place.

[Sooz]

LOL! And I get nervous if I've had a movie for two weeks!

[Mark]

What about getting three at once? If you're going to have it so that it's Movie Choice 'A' Or Nothing, you might as well stick to cable, because that's what they offer. If you picked all the even ones, and he picked all the odd-numbered ones, and you had three at once, then there'd always be sort of a range of different stuff to choose from at movie time.

[jenny]

I've had Desparate Housewives Season 2, Disk 2 from Netflix for two months. I've also got Desparate Housewives Season 2, Disk 1 from Blockbuster, which I assume I've purschased at this point, since I've had it for three months.
I refuse to acknowledge that I just don't have time to watch them.
We have the 3-movie subscription and I try to do one kid flick and one scary/action movie each time. The third movie is reserved for me, but it's been stalled for two months now. I didn't realize you could do multiple queues.

[Paul]

You're going to owe him "Porky's" or something like that after this.

[Moxie Mouse]

And this is why they invented separate queues. :)

[karen]

Separate lists is good, and thanks for making me aware of the option.
The his, her's and their's model sounds very appealing (until there is no more unified "their's" and it becomes her's, her's, her's and his). However we seriously have a hard time managing the time to watch a single movie (we still haven't watched the last four hours of the Sopranos we have on DVRfrom last season)and I just don't think we can manage to see three (at twice the price). This might be a good time to mention how anti-subscription I am...

[Retired at 24]

[this is good] We have this promblem at my house too, Dh has a limit to the "chic flicks" that he will watch in one week and goes in and messes the queue up. I

[zombiebite]

[this is good] now I'm curious too. but I'm pretty sure I won't find it in Kuala Lumpur *weep*

[Cri de Coeur]

[this is good] This was great! And...made me think twice about the whole subscription to Netflix feeling that something similiar would happen with the durn movie queue. :) And then...as you mentioned, there's the trouble with finding the time to gather the fam around the tellie for a viewing. Again, a very fun/funny read.

[Nevada Mountain Bear]

Oh my goodness, I'm dying here laughing. We keep coming into the same pickle. I get something interesting, and I have no time to watch it alone (yes, we need to purchase one more dvd player), or vice versa. We held onto a couple movies so long, we lost them. We owned up, reported them lost - all our fault. It was a $40 plus Netflix monthly due month. Crying shame. Maybe someday we'll find the movies and I'll own them. Though I can't remember if they were even movies worth owning.