When I see a movie or a TV show character talking about a YouTube video or even showing it to the audience, I always think did they actually put it on YouTube or did they think that I won’t check it out immediately?

Ladies and gentlemen of movie and TV industry: we live in 2014, in the time of second screen. No, we live in the time when the first screen is actually a mobile phone or tablet and not TV.

There are shows that understand the zeitgeist and put a Twitter hashtag on screen, e.g. #CoachIsBack on New Girl or #Brooklyn99 on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

On the other hand, we have shows such as Girls or even The Big Bang Theory that ignore the fact that viewers use their mobile devices while watching TV. For some reason I think that additional content could enhance the viewing experience. I’m not saying that I’d stop watching the episode and switch to YouTube or some other website, but I might do it afterwards.

Marnie’s video from Girls (2014, HBO, screen capture)

I published several blog posts on the subject of “missing videos and missing websites”: Why is the band Questionable Goods from the TV show Girls without a website?, Astronaut screams for nine minutes and As seen on Evil Wil Wheaton, but there’s another notable example from the Girls season 3.

In the third episode of the new season we saw Marnie struggling after a second breakup with Charlie. We also saw that he put the music video of Marnie covering Edie Brickell’s hit single from 1988 “What I Am” on YouTube, but Marnie desperately tried to remove it.

In the fourth episode Marnie caught Ray and Hermie watching her music video during a shift at Grumpy’s. Understandably she got extremely angry and quitted her job.

Marnie’s video from Girls (2014, HBO, screen capture)

As you can see in the photo above there should be a video on YouTube of Marnie’s song. However, I didn’t find it and I think that producers of the show haven’t put it online (if they even made the whole video). There’s also no user called FORBIDcharlie1986.

The TV show Girls is doing a lot of things extremely good and I like the show a lot, however I think it would be even better if they handle those from-TV-to-web extensions differently.

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