For millennials, summer 2016 brought out everything we never knew we wanted back in our lives. Every piece of entertainment news was #tbt worthy.Â
July 1Â gave us new songs from Blink 182, whose new album “California” is their first since 2011.Â
July 6 gave us Pokemon Go, the exercise necessitating, augemented reality we didn’t know we wanted. Everyone from fifth grade girls to middle aged men are roaming around the streets aimlessly in search of little monsters to catch and the next gyms to overtake. Oh, and egg hatching. That requires moving. We’ve certainly all gotten our steps in this summer.
July 31 gave us the script book for “Harry Potter and The Cursed Child,” a play a lot of us across the pond don’t currently have the chance to see live. An eighth story we never realized we needed. Set 19 years later as our favorite trio is navigating adulthood, “The Cursed Child” gives us answers to questions we didn’t know to ask. It expands plot lines we thought finite. It forces us to read the word “Always” as a single line of dialogue again.Â
Why is this significant?Â
Those of us who grew up with Blink on our iPod Classics, Pokemon Gold on Gameboy Colors and Harry Potter in print and on VHS are young adults. Our time with technology has morphed from these simple beginnings to pinging emails, Facebook groups, homework assignments and work projects. Even social media platforms are becoming our jobs instead of our wasted free time as companies set out full force onto the electronic frontier. Often, the closest we come to using our time online for strictly social, enjoyable activities is limited to binge watching TV shows on Netflix or one-click purchasing goodies on Amazon.Â
Insert summer 2016. Instead of being emailing, tweeting Prime members, we reverted back to being Pokemasters and Wizards for a little while. We read the words “Expecto Patronum” and freaked out when we spotted a Pikachu. We didn’t need to buy new, expensive game consoles to do so. We needed a $17 book and a free app. Suddenly, our childhood, once thought lost in the stacks of books in boxes at our parents’ house or in second hand gaming shops, was delivered to us on the screens of our phones. Â
Slowly but surely, the entertainment industry is thrusting everything we grew up loving, into relevance. “Fuller House” premiered on Netflix, giving us back the Tanner Family. In November, “Gilmore Girls” will make their appearence for a four part revival, filling all of the plot holes that Amy Sherman-Palladino’s season 7 departure didn’t get the chance to pave over. Next year, Emma Watson will step back onto the big screen as Belle in “Beauty and The Beast.”
What will we see next? A “Grey’s Anatomy” ghost episode? A “Roseanne” revival? A Sims Go?Â
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Image Courtesy of Seventeen.comÂ