PORTLAND, ME — Local couple Jenna and Marcus Ortiz celebrated a meaningful milestone this week: one full year of saying “we should watch something” every night before scrolling through streaming menus for approximately ninety minutes and going to bed.
“It started as a little thing,” said Jenna, 32. “One night Marcus said, ‘Want to watch something?’ and I said, ‘Sure, what?’ And then we just never stopped asking. That was 365 nights ago.”
The couple estimates they have spent 547 hours over the past year browsing thumbnails, reading descriptions aloud, and watching the first eight seconds of trailers before saying “hmm” and moving on.
“We’ve seen every single title card on four services,” said Marcus, 34. “I could tell you what any show is about from the thumbnail alone. I have never seen an episode of any of them.”
Rituals
Over time, the couple says, the nightly search has developed its own rituals. Marcus always suggests a documentary they will not watch. Jenna always says “maybe something light,” then rejects every light thing for being “too light.” Around minute forty, one of them says “or we could just rewatch something,” and the other says “yeah,” and neither of them moves.
At around minute seventy, they usually find a promising option, at which point one of them notices it’s 11:15 p.m. and says, “Actually, it’s kind of late to start something.”
The anniversary
To mark the occasion, Marcus planned a special evening: a candlelit dinner at home followed by “finally, actually watching something.”
The dinner went beautifully. Dessert was served at 8:30 p.m. By 9:45 p.m., the couple had narrowed it down to three options. By 10:20, they had narrowed it down to a different three options. At 10:55, Jenna fell asleep while Marcus was reading the description of a Danish crime series.
“It was perfect,” Marcus said. “It was exactly us.”
Looking ahead
The couple say they have no plans to change. “People ask, ‘Why don’t you just pick something?’” Jenna said. “But the scrolling is the thing. It’s our time together. We’re making decisions as a team. We just never make them.”
The Ortizes say they’re already planning for year two. They are considering adding a fifth streaming service, “just to see what’s on there.”