I have a list in my Netflix, but didn’t have the bandwidth last night for starting a new series. As Google is always monitoring and listening in, I saw a Harrison Ford movie article on my phone. I realized that I’d seen it as soon as it started streaming. I think I saw it when I had a DVD subscription to Netflix. However, I couldn’t remember how the premise tied everything up, so I watched it with my cell phone handy.
My girlfriend has Flu A. Because I was sick over Thanksgiving week, which is a week that I never work, I didn’t get a flu or COVID shot. That means that I have Flu A too, but I’m not running a practice or raising a toddler, so I simply have a sore face and jaw today. Yesterday sucked and I slept 11-hours in total. She ran a fever of 107 at one point last night and that’s so scary. She’s taking her daughter into the doctor today.
I texted back and forth with my girlfriend and few other folks and watched, “The Age of Adaline.”
This post isn’t about suspending disbelief.
It’s not about medical miracles or neurology.
It’s about alcohol.
I’ve had nothing to drink since 12/30/24.
I go back to work tomorrow, and there will be reasons that I justify for myself to have 1-2 beers.
I won’t though.
Alcohol usage is so normalized.
Let’s get back to this movie.
The love interest tells the protagonist that lovers and glasses of wine should never be counted when she says that she doesn’t want another drink.
The protagonist and her love interest split a bottle of wine in a 1950s convertible that is sitting in a warehouse. They’re not eating.
The characters eat a little bit of dinner and drink two different wines and then have cognac at night.
I don’t think that without my choice that I’ve made, I’d ever have given these scenes a second thought. However, watching the copious amounts of booze that’s consumed in this movie about never aging is alarming. Alcohol is the normal backdrop of every evening shot in the film.
What is your favorite series or movie? Do the characters drink? How much? Why do you think that drinking is a “normal” part of our collective habit?
Return 
Alcohol is ancient and deeply embedded in almost every culture. One of the oldest recipes known is for making beer. Even animals are drawn to fermented fruits or grains.
What gets me in shows is the way characters will order something, have it delivered, but then walk away from it (often untouched) because script. Really tweaks my “waste not, want not” upbringing.
I told my girlfriend tonight that I never would’ve even noticed all the alcohol if I hadn’t just stopped to support my colleague. It’s interesting to me how I just followed drinking in lock step with societal norms
I have a few TV shows I enjoy. I think a lot of shows show people drinking but I don’t really focus on that. I do think drinking is normalized too much
Oops! My reply to you, LA, went above!
There are some shows I’ve watched that have an enormous amount of drinking – Mad Men, Californication and now Landman – mostly beers in that one. Most of the shows I watch have drinking involved in some way.
Yes, drinking all the time is the default in most media