There must be someone besides me watching "House of Cards."
Someone? Hello? I know you're out there.
The new made-for-Netflix series, a baker's dozen of episodes that made their debut in one fell swoop two weeks ago, has gotten as much publicity lately as Beyonce. Netflix announced this week that the tightly plotted, well-acted, irrepressibly cynical show is the most-watched series on its site right now.
How many viewers is that? Netflix bosses refuse to say. They claim they won't tell even the star, Kevin Spacey, though anyone who does watch "House of Cards" knows that powerful people lie as easily as they breathe.
Whatever the viewer count, I feel sure that someone besides me and, reportedly, the entire United States Congress, is gobbling up the show.
I'm just trying to figure out who.
"Anybody here watching 'House of Cards'?" I asked the audience at a talk I gave earlier in the week. I was hoping to illustrate a point about power and politics by using the show as a common reference point.
One hand went up. So much for common reference points.
"Are you watching 'House of Cards'?" I asked several friends and acquaintances the next day, thinking it would be interesting to discuss various aspects of the show.
Maybe we could chew over questions like: Can you really like a show in which everyone is corrupt? Would you kill for the clothes worn by Robin Wright's character?
And who makes the better political villain — Kelsey Grammer as the Chicago mayor in "Boss" or Spacey as the House majority whip in "House of Cards?"
But no one I asked had seen it.
"I've heard about it," one person said.
"What channel is that on?" said someone else.
"What's it about?" said another, looking at me as if I were a zombie.
OK, the only reason I'm using the word "zombie" is to segue into more evidence of our growing entertainment gap.
I was at the supermarket the other day as the clerk, scooping my groceries into a bag, chatted with the cashier about some show he couldn't get enough of.
I asked what he was talking about.
"The Walking Dead," he said. I told him I knew nothing about it.
"You gotta watch it," he said.
I told him I was busy watching "House of Cards."
"What's that about?" he asked.
If I had cable, I might be among the 12.3 million people ("jaw-dropping record ratings") who watched the most recent episode of AMC's zombie show. But probably not.
There's just too much TV out there. On cable, on broadcast, on Hulu, Netflix, Apple, Amazon. Even if you did nothing but watch TV all day every day, you couldn't keep up. No wonder no one seems to be watching the same things.
The entertainment gap is not new. It's been a long time — back to the days of the original "Dallas" — since you could assume that you could discuss your favorite TV with almost anyone you ran into.
But as the options multiply, the gap widens. I was at a dinner recently where everyone was engrossed in some TV series — but none of us was watching the same thing.
You can enjoy a show without discussing it, but there's something lost when you watch in a vacuum. I forced a season of "Justified" on a friend just so we could share our deep thoughts on Timothy Olyphant.
And if you're thinking, "Who?," you are probably too busy watching season three of "Downton Abbey," which I may get around to one day.
