The Christians Who Are Stealing Our Peacock

I am not Keeper of the Passwords

So long as you don’t ask Netflix for its corporate opinion, sharing your Netflix is a victimless crime. It’s far easier, if staying at a friend’s house, to watch their logged-in streaming service than to log your friend out and log yourself in before streaming Is It Cake?

When we were in England, we could have logged into the hotel room’s TV with our own suite of streaming channels, but didn’t. Well, I couldn’t: in every family there is one Keeper of the Passwords. My wife is Keeper of the Passwords. The best I can do to log in is to ask her to log us in.

Besides, we didn’t have to log in. Someone left their Netflix logged in.

The family who did so were the Larussos. The different icons were labelled Mommy Larusso, Daddy Larusso, etc. Under Daddy Larusso, I watched a bad movie one morning, before anyone was awake. Then – like a cat covering its business – I deleted the evidence of having watched it. Daddy Larusso would never know.

(I was a movie only available on Netflix UK, that Tom Cruise Mummy film.)

It felt less of a crime to “steal” a movie if no one knew I did it but me. And I could have gotten Cindy, Keeper of the Passwords, to log our Netflix account in, and log the Larussos out.

But if we done that, then we might have forgotten to log out.

Cut to last week: I get a notice that our Peacock account has been accessed, from a zip code that aligns with a summer house we visited a few years ago.

I know, I know, you pay to watch Peacock? Hey, we’re only paying for The Office, which we watch as a family. Once that’s done we’ll move onto Parks and Rec, and then we are out of the Peacock business.

No one has Peacock, so no one knows what Peacock has. What is does have is bizarre: a miniseries about a woman who put a picture of herself on a billboard to be famous, a Tiger King non-documentary, a live-action Frogger game show, and a prequel show about Tom Hanks’ character from Da Vinci Code, alas not starring Tom Hanks. (Trivia question: Which of these 1980s shows has a Peacock remake: Punky Brewster, Saved by the Bell, Fresh Price of Bel Air? The answer, of course, is all three.)

Peacock’s got a back catalog stuff as well: one of its older shows is a Jesus of Nazareth miniseries from 1977. Another is The Chosen, a fan-funded TV show chronicling Jesus’s life.

(Relevance tie-in! That Jesus miniseries was filmed in Tunisia in 1976, at the exact same time just a few miles away from where George Lucas was filming the first Star Wars. Their remote-controlled Artoo unit actually malfunctioned, rolled off the Star Wars set, couldn’t be stopped, and rolled all the way into the adjoining Biblical set! I called it a “literal come-to-Jesus moment” in YOUR WORSHIPFULNESS.)

I know about Jesus of Nazareth and The Chosen on Peacock because both suddenly appeared on our recently viewed feed last week.

This is fine by me: we borrowed someone else’s Netflix, someone else borrows our Peacock. I’d have to be a hypocrite to be offended. (Although I hid my tracks, so maybe the Larussos still don’t know. Am I worse, for covering up my crime?)

There’s an easy way to stop this from happening, if I want: I can reset the password. But I don’t feel I need to, and not just because Cindy, as Keeper of the Passwords, would have to do it. That would (mildly) punish us, to punish someone else to a greater degree. Doesn’t seem worth it.

A few days ago, Cindy asked what else “the Christians who are stealing our Peacock” were watching. I told her that sounded like the title of a New Yorker short story, then decided to use it for a newsletter title.

We’re all a little bit scofflaw-y: we drive 70 in a 55 lane, those of us old enough to used Napster,  and most people’s first drink was not before they were 21. (Also of note: we never really repealed those 1950s-based laws saying downloading pornographic images was an interstate commerce felony.)

It’s rarely justice that wants others to be punished for the same things we ourselves do. Love your neighbor as yourself, as someone with a Peacock show once said. If you want to watch it, let me know: I’ll hook you up.

SAD MICKEY MOUSE OF THE WEEK

SAD SUPER MARIO OF THE WEEK

SAD SPIDER-MAN OF THE WEEK (thanks to SuperEmoFriends)

JUBILANT PRINCESSS LEIA OF THE WEEK

ME OF THE WEEK

(I went to a convention right after a vacation and remembered to pack everything except blazers and sports coats. So I’m short-sleeved here, and begloved. Thanks to Connecticut’s Record-Journal for covering the event!)

UPCOMING APPEARANCES

SEPTEMBER 8-10 – BALTIMORE COMIC-CON - Baltimore, MD (i’m here right now! Come say hi!)

DECEMBER 16 – BIG APPLE COMIC CON, New York, NY