So I’ve stopped watching #7delaan and here’s why
To be fair, I’ve stopped watching 7de Laan lots of times in the past. Sometimes for a few weeks. Sometimes for a few months. I may even have stopped watching 7de Laan for a few years at some point. There’ve been many reasons why I stopped watching the show. Storylines or life. At some point, I worked multiple jobs, studied part-time, had a side business, moved home, or exercised at that time. I sat out the 7de Laan fight club storyline completely. I also passed on the cult storyline in recent times. Before that, I used to skip the modelling shows.
So the reason I stopped watching this time is two-fold. Firstly, I watched the first week of the new three days episodes a week normal on Viu. I fast-forwarded through most of it. The only highlights were seeing (far too little of) Jerome (Terrence Bridgett), and Jorrie (Chanelle de Jager) scheming with de Wet. The whole thing with the young bunch on a road trip was just too cheesy for me. And I guess one of my pet peeves on soapies is when the writers change storylines or maybe a new writer took over and just stopped writing a story. For instance, when Romeo and Shady first met, there were the beginnings of a story. But then nothing. And the next thing they get together, but there’s still no story. Except that they’re there to prop up a romance for Romeo and Khetiwe. It doesn’t help that I don’t like Khetiwe and never have. However, I hate contrived storylines more than anything. And also the storyline with De Wet and Mariaan just stopped, seemingly to bring David Reese back in as boring, annoying Chris Welman.
Besides not liking most of the young bunch, I realised that I pretty much don’t enjoy most of the characters or stories. I like Ivy and Marvin and the children. Vanessa, Karmen, and Bonita are fine. I like Fikani and Alexa. And I even like Lesedi and Mariaan. But I don’t care enough about any of them to tune in. The irritations are more than the enjoyment. But I accept that 7de Laan has to appeal to a younger crowd and bring in new viewers. And I accept that 7de Laan has to tell its stories differently in a shorter time frame. But I haven’t watched an episode since the last Jerome sighting and haven’t missed it at all.
But what has been the final nail in the coffin for me was the fact that there’s no place to stream 7de Laan online for free. Viu now asks for a subscription and TelkomOne wants a subscription as well. YouTube is a couple of weeks behind. So even if I wanted to binge-watch a few 7de Laan episodes and maybe get into it again, that option is now lost to me. The producers of 7de Laan probably has nothing to do with SABC 2’s short-sightedness. SABC 3 killed Isidingo the same way when they took too long to start streaming their show on YouTube.
So without any storylines or characters, like Paula in the past, as motivation to tune in and no free platform to stream from, I can’t see myself watching or writing about 7de Laan in the near future. But I’ll never say never, because who knows, things might change. Until next time (possibly), thank you for reading.
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