The Remote Control
A sagging corduroy sectional in a dimly lit apartment in Milwaukee at 8:46 PM, where two open pizza boxes are cooling on the coffee table and the TV is frozen on the Netflix "Are you still watching?" screen.
There is one remote control. It has landed in the exact midpoint of the couch cushion between them. Double wants to restart the show they've been watching — a middling Norwegian thriller called "Fjord of Lies" — at episode four, the one they both fell asleep during last Thursday. Bust wants to abandon the series entirely and start the documentary about competitive mushroom foraging that has a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. The remote's left arrow button is sticky with something neither of them wants to identify, and whoever grabs it first sets the trajectory of the entire evening.
“We are FOUR episodes deep. You don't abandon a fjord mid-fjord, that's just geography.”
“We fell asleep twice. The show's villain is a salmon farmer named Bjørn. The mushroom doc has a 97.”
Episode four of Fjord of Lies turned out to be the one where Bjørn the salmon farmer snaps and feeds his business partner to the industrial smoker, which was genuinely shocking and led to a five-episode binge that ended at 2:17 AM with both of them whispering 'Bjørn, no' at the screen.
I TOLD you — you never judge a fjord by its first three episodes, that's literally the Norwegian way.
I will never emotionally recover from rooting for a salmon farmer, and I need you to know the mushroom doc would not have done this to me.